


Sonata in G, Mvt IV

by Cantoris



Series: Sonata in G [4]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Families of Choice, Foyet is coming up, High School, Not Beta Read, Team as Family, Teen Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:28:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 55,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25699573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cantoris/pseuds/Cantoris
Summary: Senior year has arrived and Rachel faces choices about her future, but the past is still making itself known. She and Michael really have to figure out what's going on between them, and college is on the horizon. Before that though, a figure from Hotch's past makes himself known, putting Rachel in the path of yet another criminal with a vendetta.
Series: Sonata in G [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/128310
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	1. Chamber Music

“Happy birthday, dear Rachel, happy birthday to you!”

Garcia and Rossi brought out a tiramisu cheesecake, complete with eighteen lit candles, and placed it before me. I looked around at the smiling faces of them, Hotch, Reid, Emily, Morgan, and JJ who had just finished singing to me.

_I wish that they always come home safely,_ I wished fervently, drew in a deep breath and then directed my breath with the precision that came of playing a wind instrument until every single candle was smoking.

The team applauded and Garcia leaned over to kiss me on the cheek. 

“Happy birthday, sweet cakes!”

“Speaking of, get cutting, that looks delicious,” Emily ordered, handing a knife to Rossi.

I laughed and accepted more birthday greetings from my new, unofficial family. We were currently gathered in the private room of an Italian restaurant that Rossi had reserved for the occasion. Miraculously, there had been no last minute call out to a case that would have postponed this party. I’ll admit that it had been a concern in the back of my mind when Hotch had brought it up to me weeks earlier. The gods of tragedy were being kind to me for once.

“Two slices for you, JJ?”

The pregnant blonde mock glared at Morgan when he offered the double loaded plate to her, but she didn’t turn it down. 

“Birthday girl first,” Garcia chided. 

“Nothing but Torcaso’s finest,” Rossi said, handing me a slice of the cheesecake and a fork.

I took a bite quickly so that Garcia would allow everyone else to eat. Within moments, everyone was served and the conversation returned to JJ’s pregnancy. Just starting her final trimester, it was a frequent topic for the team. I was glad that I wasn’t the center of attention anymore.

When Hotch had asked me what I wanted and what I wanted to do for my birthday, I had tried to insist that I didn’t need anything. My birthday last year had been dismal at best, coming so soon after my mom’s murder and funeral. Considering Dad had left soon after it, I would never remember turning seventeen fondly.

At first, Hotch had accepted my response and my desire to gloss over the day without any special attention. And then Garcia heard about that and all of a sudden, I didn’t really have a choice in the matter.

“You only turn eighteen once, chickadee,” she had admonished me over coffee one day over the summer. “We are going to celebrate it and celebrate _you_ like you deserve, _comprende_?”

From there, it spiraled out of my control as Garcia enlisted Rossi to organize dinner and cake while she decorated and ordered everyone to buy gifts.

Honestly, I was a little afraid to open those gifts, however innocently they sat piled together on a side table as we finished the cheesecake. I was positive that I would get embarrassed by them, mostly due to sentimentality. I still couldn’t believe that these people would do all of this for me.

But I loved them as much as they loved me. They were my family.

“All right, present time!”

The attentive restaurant staff cleared our plates as Garcia and Reid ferried my gifts over to me. In total, there were five boxes and three envelopes. I got a gift card to nail salon for a full works package (manicure, pedicure, and facial) from JJ, and lottery tickets from Morgan.

“Now that you’re legal, see if you’re lucky,” he told me with a wink.

Considering what else I could purchase now at eighteen years old, I counted my blessings that it was only lotto tickets. Then again, Morgan had to know what would happen to him if he had bought me anything more scandalous in front of Hotch.

Emily had bought me a couple of Mercedes Lackey books, some of my favorites. Rossi was the last envelope with another gift card to my favorite music store. Garcia’s gift was a series of boxes, full of clothing she had bought for me. In typical Garcia fashion, they were fun and pretty in bright colors and patterns. The type of clothing that I used to wear until the last year. I smile and thanked her, even if I wasn’t sure I would ever feel comfortable wearing clothing like that ever again.

I opened Reid’s gift and discovered the first three seasons of _Star Trek: Voyager_ on DVD. He got teased for it more than I did. I had a feeling I would be seeing the rest of the series at Christmas.

My last two gifts were wrapped in the same paper, but labeled differently, one from Hotch and the other from Haley and Jack. Reid had told me once that the team had a rule against profiling the other members. I wondered what they were all thinking about the fact that Hotch and Haley were divorced but they still coordinated my birthday gifts.

Hotch had gotten me a digital camera and Haley a photo album. 

“Thank you,” I said quietly so that only Hotch could hear me.

My guardian nodded gravely but smiled ever so slightly. “We thought you might want to document your senior year.”

I rolled my eyes at that. There was only so much I would want to remember about high school, and not all of it fondly. I wasn’t miserable there, but I only really had Michael as a close friend. I was anxious to graduate and move on to the next chapter of my life.

But for the moment, Garcia insisted on taking pictures immediately. Hotch had thoughtfully also included batteries, allowing the tech goddess to bounce around the room and filling it with flashing light.

Finally, the party started to break up just as I was about to put a kibosh on Garcia taking more pictures. JJ, Morgan, and Emily were the first to leave, with each woman hugging me one last time and Morgan gallantly kissing my hand like he was my champion. Rossi and Garcia were next, after Rossi had presented me with the leftover tiramisu cheesecake wrapped up and ready to go.

While Hotch took an armful of my presents out to the car, I stood next to Reid to say good bye.

“Thanks again,” I said. “I know it must have been difficult to get me _Voyager_ instead of _Next Generation_.”

For all both Reid and I could be easily classified as “Trekkies” we each had a different favorite series.

“Not difficult at all, it was _your_ birthday,” Reid pointed out.

I reached up and hugged him, holding on for a couple of moments. In the past couple of days, I had received a birthday card with fifty dollars in cash from my brother John and a postcard from Alan who was currently working as a doctor on a repurposed cruise ship of all things that sailed up and down the African coast. Nothing more than that. I would never stop appreciating having someone who actually knew me and stuck around when I needed him.

“Happy birthday, Rachel,” Reid said quietly in my ear, hugging me back easily. “I hope it’s everything you wanted it to be.”

I hummed neutrally. As wonderful as it had been, I would always be missing both my mom and my dad. When I pulled back, Reid must have read that in my eyes because he pulled me in again for a second hug, whispering, “I know.”

“Good night.”

“Sweet dreams.”

Reid watched until I got into Hotch’s car before he went to his own. Eighteen years old and he was still looking to make sure I was safe. I grinned at myself; I could be fifty and Reid and the rest of them would probably still act like I was under their protection.

“Did you have a good time?” Hotch asked when I slid into shotgun.

“Yeah,” I answered with a small smile. “I’m glad Garcia talked me into it.”

“You’re lucky she didn’t make you wear the birthday hat,” Hotch told me as he drove us home. He went on when I frowned at him. “It’s a pink felt cake, complete with candles. She always brings it out for birthdays at the office.”

I didn’t even need to ask him if he was kidding. One: Hotch rarely joked. Two: it was such a Garcia thing to do.

“Instead I now have about a hundred pictures of myself on my own camera,” I countered. “Despite that, thank you. I’ll call Haley tomorrow to thank her for the album.”

“You’re welcome. I’m only sorry I didn’t think of it last year for your band tour.”

I shrugged. “Well, no offense to yours and Haley’s intentions, but I’ll probably use the album for something other than school memories.”

Ever the profiler, Hotch probably knew more of how I felt about high school than I expected he did.

“I’m sure you’ll find something to do with it,” was all Hotch said.

Scrolling through the preview of the pictures just from tonight, I started thinking about an obvious choice of theme. But telling Hotch what it was would probably embarrass him, so I didn’t.

“So, are you actually going to use the lotto tickets?” my best friend, Michael Garrett, asked me the next day at school.

“Something tells me that my luck is not going to work in my favor,” I answered dryly.

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

“You realize you just doomed me to actually winning the lottery and then have someone come after me for the money,” I pointed out.

Michael grinned. “You have a very vivid and paranoid imagination, you know that?”

“You know that better than anyone.”

“Doesn’t mean I don’t wish it weren’t true.”

We were in a practice room during our shared lunch period before I went off to French and Michael went to auto shop. To most people, our friendship made little to no sense. Despite the recent events in my life, I was a good student with good grades who used to be able to claim I had a good family life—even if it was infinitely more complicated than other good families, of course. And even though my parents had never been married, I had had a mother and father who played active and supportive roles in my life.

Michael’s mom had disappeared when he was a kid and the best thing to be said about his dad was that he wouldn’t hit him if he wasn’t drinking. The problem with that, of course, was that he was steadily drinking more and more all the time. This led Michael to avoid his home as much as possible and try to work a full time job under the table to save up enough to move out when he was legal. With those hours, Michael had to prioritize his studies, leading to poor grades and GPA held at the average mark because he tested well.

Moving into his own apartment had changed a lot for my friend, but there was only so much he could do now to salvage his education. He still had to work at the car repair shop to pay for rent, utilities, and food, but at least he was much happier this year than I’d ever known him to be. 

But where our friendship came from was much simpler than anyone thought: we listened to each other and we never judged. For me, that meant I had been the only one who knew about the abuse Michael suffered from his father. In return, Michael was the only person I had ever told the full extent of my nightmares which were fueled by imagined and very real horrors from Dad’s job and Mom’s death. With Hotch as my guardian, my price for living with him, being supported by him, was a continued source for those nightmares with new material.

Michael knew about those, too.

And it wasn’t all angst and drama between us either. For the most part, we were able to just sit around and talk without deep and heavy emotions coming into the conversation. Whatever geekiness Reid had initially fostered in my from my earl teens was supplemented by Michael’s. His sense of humor was catching as well.

“So, was it really as horrible as you thought it would be?” Michael asked a moment later.

I had to seriously think about it. “It was…nice,” I finally concluded. “And I think that’s the scary part.”

“Nice is now scary? I didn’t know you were updating Webster’s.”

I pushed against Michael’s shoulder in protest and smirked. “I wasn’t expecting nice and I don’t really know how I feel about nice any more. That’s why it scares me.”

“You mean, you felt like it shouldn’t be nice because of everything else that’s happened last year.”

“Yeah.”

“And maybe you think you don’t get to deserve nice anymore.”

I looked up sharply. It was bad enough living with profilers who could pull my thoughts out of thin air and verbalize them, but my best friend was an expert at reading me at the same time.

“It’s not that I think I don’t deserve it,” I tried to explain. “I just keep waiting for it to blow up in my face.”

“The way I see it, you’ve got two options,” Michael told me. “One: if it goes to crap, you appreciated the good stuff while you could. And two: it doesn’t go to crap and you don’t spoil what you’ve got with unnecessary drama.”

He was right, I knew. And it was the same thing that I kept trying to tell myself when my subconscious went all emo on me. 

I didn’t answer him right away. I looked up and saw that we had a minute to go before passing period began.

“So basically, you’re telling me ‘ _laissez le bon temps roulez_?’” I asked. 

Michael noticed the time as well and stood up, offering me his hand to help me to my feet which I took.

“If that was French for ‘get over it’ then yes.”

I shrugged. The sentiment was close enough.

We said good bye and parted ways. We wouldn’t see each other for the rest of the day since band and orchestra had both been in the morning and we each had work after school. I got through French, intro to law for my business credit, and English and also managed to get most of my homework done during my study hall.

I wasn’t surprised to see a wrapped package in the front seat of my car when I got to my parking spot once school had let out. Michael didn’t have a key to my car, but I wasn’t naïve enough to think that he hadn’t learned how to jimmy a car door open in his line of work.

I smiled to open up a CD of _Avenue Q_ , put it into my CD player immediately and cued up “It Sucks to Be Me.”

My job at Monarch Books had a lot of perks besides a paycheck. It would have been nice enough just being next to a café, but on top of that, the café was owned by my boss’ mother. Colin and Matilda Morris offered joint membership cards between the store and the café for their frequent customers. 

Before starting my shift at the book store, I stopped by the café first to pick up the usual afternoon snack order.

“Rachel! Happy birthday!”

I smiled at what was probably one of the best things to happen because of my job. Or rather, _who_ was the best thing, Natasha Morris, Colin’s daughter and probably my closet friend after Michael.

“Got something special for you today,” Natasha promised with a wink. “One amaretto cherry brownie, made especially by yours truly.”

Natasha was twenty two and studying culinary arts at the local college; her grandmother was already leaving much of the management of the Crown Café to her and would most likely sign everything over in a couple of years. 

“Thank you,” I told Natasha. She knew brownies were my favorite and always included one in the standard afternoon order for the bookstore she prepared for us. 

“Any plans for the next weekend?” Natasha asked me. “There’s a club I like that lets you in at eighteen. They just stamp your hand so the bartenders know not to give you anything stronger than Red Bull.”

“Maybe another time,” I answered. “But how about some clothes shopping instead?”

Natasha dramatically slapped a hand over her chest. “Be still my heart, are you actually proposing we do something girly?”

I had been thinking about it all day. “I got some clothes for my birthday that are…nice, but just not me anymore. I was thinking about trading them in at the store.”

Garcia would understand, I was fairly certain. I wasn’t quite to the point of wearing all black, but the bright colors and bold patterns were just too much for me.

Natasha was almost as bad a profiler sometimes. She met my eyes and seemed to know what I meant.

“All right, leave it to me, we’ll find you clothes that are smoking hot, cute, chic, whatever without going overboard, I promise.”

I smiled. Natasha knew something of what I had gone through because of her own mother’s death years ago. 

“See you then.”

“And you eat every speck of that brownie, understand? No sharing no matter how much my dad pouts!”

I walked out of the café and down to the next door for the bookstore with a smile still lingering on my face. It was certainly _not_ how I had envisioned my life turning out, but despite my bleak imagining around this point last year, I had managed to reform my life into something good again.

I wasn’t certain what I would do if it all came apart again.


	2. Relative Minor

Related episode: 3.03 Minimal Loss  
 _Relative keys are the major and minor scales that share the same key signature_

I had had two very important discussions with Hotch over the summer. We talked about my proposed major for college and who would accompany me on college tours. 

My first choice major was easy.

“I’m not saying that music is the only thing I’m good at,” I had explained to Hotch. “But it’s something that I’ve done for as long as I can remember and it’s gotten me through a lot. I’m good at it and it’s my passion.”

“I understand that,” he had told me. “But I want you to consider something that’s a little more stable considering what the job market is likely to be when you graduate. Your trust fund is fairly substantial, yes, but you shouldn’t think to rely on it.”

“I’m not teacher material, so I’m not going to study education,” I had said, flat out. I wasn’t fond of teenagers even when I was one, and I didn’t think that would change much in the future.

“Just, try to think of a second major or a minor that will be practical.”

It took a few weeks before I thought of one. I understood why Hotch was pushing me on the subject. It was another of his ways to look out for me and try to prepare me for the real world. And I was well aware of the risk of being a professional musician. There were only so many jobs available with an abundance of talented people gunning for them all the time.

But music was my passion and emotional support in one. Music was how I found many of my friends (regardless of how many of those friendships turned out) and it was how I had been able to cope a lot with my mother’s death and my father’s abandonment. No matter what happened in my life, I had music and no one could take it away from me.

It wasn’t until I was working at Monarch that same week and watching my boss, Colin, work on his books that I thought of something suitable that would appease my guardian. 

“Colin, do you like owning your own business?” I had asked.

Colin was a gruff personality, but a good man. “I set my own hours, write my own checks, I only hire the people I think I can tolerate. How many other jobs can claim those benefits?”

Put that way… I could suddenly picture owning my own music store. I felt at home at Monarch and would keep working there through college, but my own store was something I could work toward. I could even use some of my trust fund as start-up money. And with flexible hours, I could still audition at professional orchestras or opera houses for performance.

Once I passed on this idea to Hotch, I got another talk about the risks of owning my own business—and then small business statistics from Reid once news spread around the team—but he also gave me his blessing.

Neither of us ever mentioned the possibility or likelihood of me studying psychology or criminology.

The second discussion about college involved who would go with me on college visits. Nothing was really stopping me from going alone, but I didn’t want to. Everyone else would have a parent or older sibling or aunt or uncle or whatever with them. My problem was all the people who fit in my “whatever” category.

He never said it and he never would have resented it, but I calmly and diplomatically told Hotch that I didn’t want him to come with me. Before he could argue with me, I told him exactly why I didn’t want him as my choice. It was because I wanted him to have his free weekends open for Jack. 

Hotch still tried to argue with me, but I kept shooting him down. No matter how much I was his responsibility, I wasn’t his child. And considering how little I saw my own dad prior to my eighth birthday, I was bound and determined that Jack would get more time than that.

Luckily, at that point in the conversation, I had already weighed my other options and was able to present him with my choice and who had already agreed.

Reid, actually, was the second of my list to be crossed off. No one, himself included, would claim that his college experience was typical, so I wasn’t positive that he would be able to think about what _I_ would be looking for in a college compared to what he had looked for. And I could all too easily picture Reid in full Reid-mode bombarding whatever student was stuck playing ambassador to us with questions the poor kid never knew existed.

Garcia was out for very similar reasons. I loved my pseudo fairy godmother to pieces, but she was just as eccentric in her way as Reid was. She also had a love life that I didn’t want to suffer by sucking up her free weekends just like for Hotch’s father time with Jack.

I liked JJ and Morgan well enough and both of them had the more traditional experiences with college that I was looking for. But I just didn’t I know them personally as well as I knew the others on the team. Also, both of them had been athletes and I guessed that they would be bored silly with touring the fine arts buildings on the campuses I visited.

Which left me with Emily and Rossi. I felt closer to them than Morgan and JJ (even though those two had been around longer, strange as it turned out) and I knew that each of them would be good at asking the questions adults would ask on visits about scholarships and tuition. But mostly, when I asked Emily to be my college buddy, it was because she’d been to college more recently, she knew the kinds of things I was looking for in a college, and she and I wouldn’t kill each other on a road trip.

Presenting Emily’s participation and agreement as fait accompli was the deal breaker for Hotch. I had it figured out and because of that, Hotch respected my choice. Of course, after a couple visits during the summer, I found out from Emily that the rest of them, while not having hard feelings, had all still insisted on passing on questions and suggestions through Emily for the visits. It actually didn’t surprise me in the slightest.

For the most part, Emily and I toured the DC general area of Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware with some longer trips to New York and Chicago. I was looking at small liberal arts schools and larger universities alike, focused on the music programs, scholarships available, and campus life. Over the course of the summer, we had already gone on ten trips and had visited over fifteen colleges. I had already applied to twelve and was just waiting on the responses. Reid had contributed to my application strategy, with choosing my safety and reach schools based on my GPA and SAT scores. 

Touring for the most part was done. Emily and I still had some trips planned to return to my top choices to check out the specific scholarships each college had to offer. One conversation with Garcia had shown me that I wouldn’t hurt for college money. My trust fund had been started with the money I got from Mom’s life insurance and selling our house after she died. When Dad disappeared, I had inherited his apartment which had also been sold and the money added to my fund. Due to Garcia’s management, it had grown a good bit just in the last year.

But just as Hotch didn’t want me to rely on it when I got out of college to live on, I didn’t want to use it up for college when I could alleviate the cost when I could.

We had one of those trips planned for the weekend after she and Reid got back from Colorado.

“It should only be a few days,” Emily explained to me one afternoon at the Crown Café. She had come to see me after I had put in a few hours at Monarch Books after school.

“Why isn’t the whole team going on the case?” I asked. Neither Natasha nor her grandmother were working that afternoon, so I picked up Emily’s vanilla latte and my chai tea from the man behind the counter and walked us over to a table.

“It’s not a case so much,” Emily explained. “This is a more of a consultation. Colorado’s Social Services received reports concerning a religious cult that’s holed out on a ranch. Reid and I will be helping them investigate the allegations.”

That I understood. The team’s cases as I thought of them really only happened when they didn’t know who they were after. In this case, it sounded like half the job was already done. And with what I knew about religious cults…

“So, are they brainwashing people?” I asked.

Emily shook her head. “No,” she answered and then stopped to think for a while.

“Are you not telling me because you can’t, or because you think I shouldn’t know?” 

The woman smiled wryly. “Caught me. It’s not confidential or rather, it wouldn’t jeopardize our task if you knew. But the allegations are about the cult leader abusing the young girls.”

I took a sip of my tea to cover up my reaction. Something told me the abuse was probably sexual or Emily wouldn’t have felt uncertain about telling me. I felt vile just thinking about it. And I figured that those people wouldn’t be calling in any of the team if it wasn’t that serious and that obscene. Sadly, it had to be the worst of the worst before they were called in.

“Make sure the bastard pays,” I said fiercely.

I got another smile from Emily. “He will.”

We left off with Emily saying she would call me when she and Reid got back or would let me know if she was going to be a day later than planned. I went home and found that Hotch had ordered pizzas for dinner, one mushroom and onion for me and one supreme for himself. We ate off our laps on the couch, watching mindless television before I went off to my room to my computer and he worked on his reports.

Since I knew that Reid and Emily had flown out very early in the morning, I figured that the team wouldn’t get called out on a case when they were down two members. That’s why I didn’t think of that option when my cell phone vibrated in my pocket during my English class. Since it was my last for the day, I waited the remaining fifteen minutes to check what the message was.

_Trouble with R & E in CO. Team’s gone to help._

I stood at my locker for several minutes without moving. Emily had explained that they were just interviewing the children at the cult. What kind of trouble could have come up just from interviews that warranted the whole team flying out to help them? Once again, I was stuck at home while my family went off to battle monsters and I didn’t have a clue what was really going on.

I hadn’t handled their New York case well, I admit that. And even though I felt like I was about to fly apart at the seams with _not knowing_ once again, I wasn’t about to let myself break down again. At least, not as publicly as I had the last time if I could help it.

I packed up my books quickly and slammed my locker door shut before driving home on autopilot. Luckily, I wasn’t on the schedule to work that afternoon. I parked my car, walked up to the apartment, walked in, closed and locked the door behind me, and placed my messenger bag in my room. _Then_ I whipped out my phone and called Hotch.

“What is going on?” I demanded without waiting for Hotch to even speak.

_“We’re about to take off, Rachel, I don’t have a lot of time,”_ he explained first.

“Talk quickly then,” I bit off.

_“Something happened at the compound,”_ Hotch told me shortly, not pausing to comment on my manner. _“The state police tried to raid the ranch and started a stand-off with the cult. Reid and Emily are trapped inside with everyone else.”_

“Shit,” I swore. Hotch didn’t comment on that either.

_“We’re on point for negotiations. Rachel, we will get them home. I promise.”_

“Then get to it,” I said before abruptly hanging up.

I settled for one text to Garcia with my plea to be told as soon as something happened. After that, I was left standing in the middle of the room, quietly freaking out.

Michael was at work and so was Natasha. I needed someone or something to distract me so I wouldn’t work myself into a fit of hysterics, but that was difficult when I had only the two of them for friends. I knew homework wouldn’t do the job, so I whipped out some of my competition pieces for flute and started with the most difficult one I had in my repertoire. That worked for about an hour and a half before I was fidgeting more than keeping my tempo.

I cast my eyes around the apartment, looking for something, _anything_ , that would keep me from checking out mentally the way I had done before. Finally, I noticed Hotch’s bicycle helmet sitting on a shelf near the door. One of the first surprising things I had learned about my guardian when I moved in with him was his cycling hobby. Sometimes, he even took his bike with him to the office and would ride around the Academy grounds during the day for a break.

My own helmet sat next to his and I knew what I could do for the last couple hours of daylight. It was still fairly warm for early October, so I changed into leggings and a tank top with a sweatshirt. I grabbed my cell phone, keys, iPod and headphones, and my helmet.

There was a bike path five blocks away from the apartment. Over the summer, Hotch had invited me several times to ride with him when he took Jack. By this time, it was around four thirty in the afternoon, with lots of kids playing in the nearby park with their parents watching.

I cued up my iPod with Beethoven, Mahler, and Stravinsky and cranked up the volume. I made sure my phone was tucked close to my body so I could still feel it vibrate should it ring and hit the trails. I took all the forks that would lengthen my ride, I set a hard pace for myself, and no matter how my body started to whimper, I kept going. After my first full circuit, I still felt keyed up, so I went around again. I only headed for home when my daylight started to die; I could just imagine how Hotch would react if he found out I had been out on my own after dark, no matter how old I was.

Back at the apartment, I downed a tall glass of water and then gave my cat Hannah her dinner. I hopped in the shower and scrubbed until I was clean and then stood under the spray until my stomach reminded me that I hadn’t eaten my own dinner yet. I got dressed in loose cotton shorts and a long sleeved tee shirt and checked my phone. The only message was from Garcia, saying that Hotch, Rossi, Morgan, and JJ had arrived and that they had made contact with the cult leader. Nothing more.

Frowning and muttering to myself about stupid jerks who used God to manipulate people, I worked quickly in the kitchen to whip up a pan of pasta carbonara. I poured a glass of half iced tea, half lemonade and took it to the couch with me.

There wasn’t anything on the news about Colorado, so all the drama was apparently staying on local channels. I couldn’t decide if I preferred it this way to when I had had the news running during the New York shootings.

Growling in frustration, I got up and retrieved my journal and a pen from my room and returned to the couch. I put cooking shows on for background noise and then poured all my thoughts and worries onto the journal pages. Since starting it last year at Christmas, I already had quite a few pages full, a surprising number considering I only wrote in it when I was worried about the team and their cases. No standard teenage angst about boys for my journal. Especially considering how my last romantic relationship had turned out.

Despite the fact I had only sat there writing furiously for about an hour, I felt absolutely wiped out from the day. Then I remembered how long I had played my flute which burned a lot more calories than most people thought and how long I had ridden that day as well.

But I knew that no matter how tired I felt, it was still too early to go to bed and that if I didn’t tire myself out more, I was more likely to wake up from a nightmare. And I was already remembering the last time Reid had been in danger on a case in my waking mind which could rationally remind me that he had survived. Just the thought of what my subconscious would do with the memories of watching Reid beaten—by another religious, perverted asshole, no less—and dying was not something I wanted to see again.

I spent the next few hours trying to get ahead in my schoolwork. I churned out half a term paper for English, worked on a translation for French, and read the next two chapters in my law class. I was contemplating some extra problems for calculus when I saw how late it had gotten. I double checked the locks on the door and windows and then crawled into bed.

I said a prayer as Hannah jumped into bed beside me and turned out my light. _Please no dreams. Please, no dreams._

I didn’t wake up until my alarm went off the next morning. The first thing I did was check my phone which I had left on my nightstand the previous night. No messages. I hoped that meant Hotch and the others were working on saving Reid and Emily and the other people trapped in the standoff. In a way, I didn’t want to hear anything from Hotch or Garcia just in case it was bad news.

It would be another school day when I would always be one step away from being a nervous wreck. After four years, Michael would spot it immediately. Even some of my teachers, especially the ones I had had before, would notice too. Luckily, all the people who would figure out something was wrong with me today would also know why I would be upset. 

And that was exactly how my day went. Over the years, I have gotten pretty good at pushing my anxiety down where it wouldn’t get in my way to concentrate on school or music or work. For the most part, I was able to convince everyone that I was okay. Michael did catch me after band in the morning and just looked at me with concern. 

“Bad case,” I said shortly.

“Ongoing or finished?” he asked.

“Still early.”

And with that little bit of shorthand, Michael was essentially caught up and understood. He nodded, pulled me in for a crushing hug, and then headed off to class. After that I went to music theory and during that class, I got my first message from Hotch since he’d left. _Rossi saw Reid and Emily, they’re OK._

I just about slumped in my chair in relief. That was one worry down for now.

I focused better during the rest of the day. But when I hadn’t heard anything new by the time I got home at the end of the day, I was worked up into knots once again.

“I have got to get a life,” I told myself as I was left wondering what I could do to fill my time. Maybe I needed another hobby or activity.

In the end, since I was ahead for my other subjects, I did work extensively on calculus even though it made me think strongly and persistently of Reid. I ordered Chinese take out for dinner, crab ragoons and vegetable fried rice, before I turned to my new composition project from music theory. After harmonizing a melody given to us in our textbook, I wrote my own melody and then harmonized that. I wrote it in C minor and called it “Colorado.”

With that done, I was completely caught up with my homework and even ahead in several subjects through next week. Journaling more would get me worked up again so I got out the baking supplies and made a batch of peanut butter cookies. When the last tray had come out and I had finished cleaning up, I made a cup of hot chocolate with real milk and took it with a plate of cookies to my room.

I tried not to feel shut out. No, I wasn’t an agent and I didn’t study hostage negotiation strategies, but I did understand that negotiations sometimes took a lot of time and that there wasn’t room for distractions. Distractions like updating a teenage girl who was worried sick about her family held captive at the whim of a religious nut, even when the rest of her family was in charge of negotiating. Maybe especially then.

I didn’t expect a phone call that night, not when I had gotten a text earlier with the update. We had never formally designed it that way, but once I was officially in Hotch’s guardianship, I got a call or a text from him every day he was gone on a case unless Reid or Garcia beat him to it. I don’t know if he had somehow picked up on the fact that I never got that with Dad and it had driven me crazy. But it was always my cue that a case was going badly when I got the bare minimum.

Somehow, I slept through the night again and only woke up when my phone rang before my alarm could go off.

I was too groggy to check who was calling. And really, it could only be a member of the team calling me at this hour, and I frankly didn’t care which of them it was as long as I got information.

“Hello?”

_“Rachel.”_

I sighed in open relief. “Spencer. Oh my God, you’re okay. You are okay, right? And Emily?”

_“It’s all over, we’re safe. We’ve got some clean up to do here and then we’ll fly home in the afternoon, all right?”_

“Yeah, sure. Just tell Emily I’m glad you’re both okay.”

_“I will. Um, have a good day at school, I’ll see you soon.”_

I put my phone back on the nightstand and flopped back onto my bed, flinging my arm over my face. 

“Thank God,” I muttered.

But of course, it wasn’t as easy or simple a homecoming as I wanted. Emily came to see me that afternoon when I was working at the bookstore. Seeing the bruises on her face and I kind of freaked out a little

“What happened?” I demanded.

“It’s nothing,” Emily tried to comfort me. 

“It’s not nothing,” I snapped. We were off in a corner of the store where no one could hear us. “You were _beaten_.”

“It was either that or Reid would have been shot,” she told me calmly. 

I fell back into the bookcase behind me, letting it support my weight.

“God damn it.” I really didn’t want to know that. “I know I complain about not knowing enough about what goes on during cases, but that doesn’t mean you people always have to listen to me.”

Emily reached out and gripped my shoulder with her hand. “I don’t want you to make this into something bigger than it is, understand? It was a calculated risk that I decided to take in order to save us both.”

She was waiting for me to respond so I nodded. Really, there was nothing else I could do. 


	3. W.A. Mozart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of a two-parter here. It might be a stretch having Rachel do what she's about to do, but why not? Have some fun with it.

_Related episode: 4.06 The Instincts, 4.07 In Memoriam_

I knew I was becoming a common visitor at the FBI Academy at Quantico when I could walk in and all three of the security guards at the front entrance recognized me and greeted me by name.

“Not in trouble again, are you?” Officer Hughes teased me as I put my messenger bag through the x-ray belt and emptied my pockets of my keys and cell phone.

“Nope, I bring good news today,” I answered with a smile once I was through the metal detector. “I know the team gets back this morning and I wanted to surprise them.”

“All right then, you be good,” he said, handing me my visitor’s pass.

“Absolutely.”

Upstairs on the BAU floor, there were people walking around and working at their computers, but no sign of the faces I was looking for. So I walked over to Reid’s desk and sat down in his chair. I couldn’t help but smile, knowing what was in my messenger bag.

The team had been away for the past two days on a case in Vegas. There had been a little boy who had been abducted and murdered and another boy abducted. Hotch had called me the night before to tell me they had rescued the second boy but wouldn’t fly home until this morning. Reid’s mom was in Vegas so I didn’t need to ask why they were waiting the night.

But I definitely wanted to share my good news as soon as possible and since the teachers had an institute day at school and I had the day off, I figured I would surprise my family. Good news was hard to come by in the lives of FBI agents, let alone those who were always called in for the worst and most perverse cases that exist.

I was familiar enough up here that no one gave me any notice. And luckily, I had timed it closely enough that I didn’t have to wait much longer than fifteen minutes before I saw Hotch, Emily, and JJ step out of the elevator.

I jumped up and met them halfway through the bullpen, enjoying the stunned expressions on their faces.

“Rachel, what are you doing here? Is something wrong?” Hotch asked right away.

I looked around them, wanting to see if Reid, Rossi, and Morgan were behind them.

“Nothing’s wrong,” I assured Hotch. “But where are the others? I wanted to tell you all the good news.”

“They stayed behind to look into another case,” Emily explained. “What’s the good news?”  
I frowned slightly, knowing that whatever was going on wasn’t typical. Yes, sometimes only some of the team went out on investigations or cases and it wasn’t that uncommon to discover another case while the team was already working one to begin with.

But Hotch and the women were staring at me expectantly so I reached into my messenger bag and pulled out my bounty of envelopes.

“Acceptance letters,” I explained. “These just arrived in the last few days.”

I had six already, ranging from the small liberal arts schools I’d been looking at in the area as well as one from Columbia in New York, and St. Olaf’s in Minnesota.

“Congratulations!”

Emily and JJ both reached out and smothered me in their arms so that I might as well have been blind. JJ disengaged herself first and rubbed at her stomach with half a grimace on her face. I knew she was close to her due date and likely more than ready for the pregnancy to be over.

“That’s wonderful, have you made a decision yet?” Emily asked. She was my college escort and had visited most of my choice campuses with me in the last six months.

“I’m still waiting on some responses,” I said. “But I still don’t have a clear favorite.”

Hotch flipped through my envelopes, viewing the names of the colleges himself before nodding at me in his own subdued manner in approval. If I had waited until he came home later tonight, he probably would have smiled and hugged me almost as enthusiastically as Emily and JJ just had. But since we were at the office where he was the boss, he kept his reaction minimal for the sake of appearances. No matter how much I wished that it wasn’t true, it was.

But I understood and accepted it.

“Make sure you stop by Garcia’s office to let her know,” Hotch told me with an imperceptible wink.

I nearly groaned. No matter how enthusiastic Emily and JJ had reacted, Garcia would be that much more energetic. And also likely several dozen decibels louder. I was actually surprised her uncanny ESP hadn’t gone off that I was in the building.

“If the shrieking and squealing goes on for more than ten minutes, please, _please_ come and rescue me,” I begged.

“You mean interrupt Garcia while she’s fussing over you? No one is that brave,” Hotch replied shortly.

“So what case came up in Vegas?” I asked to change the subject.

“Just an old case,” Hotch told me quickly with that look on his face that told me not to pursue it. 

Which I didn’t. But that didn’t mean that I didn’t also notice the small twitch in Hotch’s eye that told me he was hiding something personal from me. Some nights with nothing else to do, Hotch and I played cards; I knew his tells almost as well as he knew mine.

An old case that was personal that came up in Las Vegas where Reid had grown up and he, Morgan, and Rossi had stayed behind to look into it. Just with those facts, I just knew that something was terribly wrong, especially if Hotch didn’t want me to know about it.

And I had the next couple of days free to investigate. I was at loose ends for the next couple of days, even from Monarch since Colin and Natasha were taking a few days vacation together. Mostly though, I didn’t want to be waiting on my hands at home and only hear about any damage that occurred after it had happened. Not this time.

“Then I’m off to the oracle of Delphi to offer sacrifice for my good tidings,” I said cheerfully. “Then I’m off to enjoy my day and maybe meet Michael for dinner tonight, okay?”

I’d said ‘maybe’ so Hotch didn’t catch me in a lie. Splitting hairs, but I knew if I tried to fight Hotch on this, I would lose.

I left before I gave myself away to a bunch of profilers and my guardian. I walked the hallways until I reached Garcia’s technological haven, knocked a syncopated rhythm on the door, and entered.

“Chickadee, what can I do for you, my love?” Garcia asked, spinning around in her chair to face me.

“I’m spreading the wealth so to speak,” I explained. “Good news to brighten your day.”

I handed my acceptance letters over and braced myself. Sure enough, Garcia cried out in joy and jumped to her feet to seize me in a crushing hug and spin me around in dizzying circles.

“I’m so happy, I’m so happy!”

Even as I was plotting, I couldn’t help my smile in the face of Garcia’s exuberance. Her joy was infectious.

“Okay, I’m going into super-sleuth mode to find out all the ins and outs of these schools,” Garcia bubbled. “I was waiting for your list to be shorter before I did the in-depth digging.”

“I might have a few more on the way, these were just the ones that came in over the last few days.”

“And you let me know about any rejection letters,” she ordered me sternly. “Any institution that turns you down deserves the email campaign I’ll launch against them.”

“Please don’t do that,” I asked. I knew better than to think Garcia was exaggerating. “It’s not worth it.”

“If you insist.”

“So, about this thing in Vegas,” I said casually. Before Garcia could brush me off like Hotch—and she was even more stringent about keeping case details from me—I went on to say, “Do you know what hotel where Reid and the others are staying? I can’t reach him on his cell so I thought I would try calling his room.”

God bless Garcia’s good-hearted nature, it was the kind of thing she would think to do herself, so she didn’t question me.

“The Fountain View, room 419, I’ll text you the phone number, chica.”

“Thanks, Penelope. I’ll let you get back to work.”

As I drove back home, I mentally listed the points in my favor. Thanks to my job at Monarch, I had my own money to use to get out to Vegas as long as the plane ticket only cost me an arm rather than an arm and a leg. I wouldn’t be missing school or work. I was eighteen so I wouldn’t be trying to travel on my own as a minor. Hotch would have told me if it was an active case so I wouldn’t technically be impeding a federal investigation. Really, the only thing I had against me was that no matter how I justified it, Hotch was going to be _really_ pissed off.

But that was something I was willing to risk this time. Nothing about this was normal, even the normal I had come to expect from life with the BAU. 

At the apartment, I went straight for my computer and booked the earliest flight to Vegas I could find, at 3:25 pm. It was about the cost of a week and a half of work for me, but worth it. Holiday hours were coming up in a couple of months anyway.

I grabbed my smaller rolling suitcase from my closet, the kind that I could bring with me as a carry on to bypass luggage check, and the baggage fee to save myself that bit of money. With Vegas in mind, I packed mostly jeans and tee shirts, along with pajamas, toiletries, and my iPod. I figured tennis shoes would get me through the whole trip and made sure my wallet had my license, debit card, cash, and contact information.

I took the time to write a note to Hotch explaining where I’d gone and why I’d gone. _I’m sorry that you’ll get upset with me,_ I wrote at the end. _And I want you to know that you can count on me to be responsible and mature, but I can’t shake the feeling that I need to do this. If it were an actual case, I wouldn’t dream of crashing. Since it’s not…I just need to do something other than wait at home to be told the bad news. I hope you can forgive me._

It would be like a tear drop trying to put out a forest fire, but it was the best I could do.

Instead of driving my car and leaving it at the airport or calling a taxi, I looked up the bus routes to get me there. I gave Hannah a kiss good bye and hoped that Hotch wouldn’t take it out on the cat or vice versa.

I got to the airport with plenty of time to check in and go through security. My heart was hammering in my chest the whole time, wondering if Garcia would have warnings set up to tell her what I was doing or if my name was on an alert list to let Hotch know I was acting without his permission. It only sounded paranoid when my flight was boarding and I was safe on the plane. 

The flight was eventless and passed as I listened to _Children of Eden_ on my iPod. When we landed in Vegas, I retrieved my suitcase from the overhead bin and walked out, feigning more confidence than I felt. It was about six at night local time by the time I made it to the pick up lanes and hailed a taxi. I had no problem working out public transportation in my own town, not so much in a new city.

“Fountain View Hotel,” I told the driver. 

“You look a little young for the casinos,” the middle-aged man chided me.

“I’m not here to gamble,” I told him. “Family trouble.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

That bit of conversation seemed to satisfy the cabbie until he pulled up in front of a hotel and got out to help me with my suitcase. I paid and thanked him, then walked into the hotel.

There was a friendly looking blonde woman at the reception desk.

“Checking in?” she asked, looking at my suitcase.

“Yes, please, is there anything available on the fourth floor?”

She didn’t bat an eyelash at my request (given gamblers and their tendency toward superstition, mine probably didn’t even ping her radar for weird requests) and checked her computer. “We’ve got rooms 423 and 414 for singles or 417 as a double.”

“Four twenty three please,” I chose, weighing proximity against price.

After I got my key card, I headed for the elevator, relieved that I hadn’t bumped into Reid, Rossi, or Morgan yet. I wanted to be secure in my hotel room before that happened just so that they wouldn’t send me right back and lose non-refundable money on the room. I hoped.

I took a second to drop my suitcase in my room and then walked two doors down to knock on the door for room 419. I almost jumped back when the door quickly swung open only two seconds later.

Given all the times I’ve seen people shocked in the last few years, I still couldn’t say that I’d ever seen anyone pole-axed before I saw Reid recognize me and look like I’d hit on the back of the head with a two-by-four. Actually, he looked more like I’d suddenly pulled a bloody hand out of my pocket.

“Rachel? What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“Um, hi. Surprise?”

“Does Hotch know you’re here?”

“Not exactly,” I answered vaguely. I checked my watch and thought about the probability of Hotch coming home and finding my note. My phone hadn’t rung yet, so most likely not.

“You just flew to Vegas without telling anyone?”

“I was worried,” I admitted truthfully. “Whatever this is, it’s not normal, not even for you guys. So, yeah, I flew out here without telling anyone because they would have tried to stop me.”

“Hotch is going to kill you,” Reid informed me baldly. He grimaced. “Hotch is going to kill _me._ ”

“Just me,” I assured him. “I’ll make sure of it.” I looked around. “Are we going to talk in the hall all night?”

Reid shook his head and gestured me inside. As I walked past him, he ran his hand through his hair, his unconscious gesture of nerves. When I sat on the bed, he took out his phone.

“I left Hotch a note,” I protested. “He’ll find it as soon as he gets home.”

We were interrupted by Rossi and Morgan’s arrival. I should have brought my camera to capture the looks on their faces when they saw me. The resulting collage would have given me blackmail material for life. And it was guaranteed to make me laugh every time I saw it.

“We’re dead,” Morgan groaned once he saw me and quickly grasped the situation. “We are so very dead.”

“Nice try, kiddo,” Rossi told me. “Let’s get you on a flight home.”

Luckily, I had anticipated this. “No direct flights to Dulles until tomorrow morning. If you put me on a connecting flight, I’ll just wait to turn around and fly back as soon as I land at the layover. I already paid for the room tonight and they don’t give refunds so I might as well stay the night.”

I had never actually made Reid upset with me in my entire life. And I wasn’t entirely convinced he was truly just angry with me so much as he was worried about Hotch’s reaction to my unexpected journey and still stressing about whatever it was keeping him here in Vegas.

“I’m not going back until I know what’s going on,” I stated calmly. I repeated my reasoning to him. “This isn’t an official case, it’s personal for you somehow, and I don’t want to hear about it secondhand if I even would hear about it. Not this time.”

And almost right on cue, my cell phone began to ring. I didn’t even need to look to know it was Hotch. I held it in my hand and took a breath to brace myself but Rossi grabbed it from me and answered it for me.

“Hotch, yes, she’s here. Unless you send the jet for her, she won’t be flying back until tomorrow. No of course I don’t approve of this. We’ll handle it in the morning and let you know when to expect her. Yeah, I’ll pass that on.”

Reid, Morgan, and I watched him as he snapped my phone shut and handed it back to me.

“Well?” I asked.

“You are on notice for being grounded for two months as soon as you get back to Virginia,” Rossi told me. I shrugged—that wasn’t remotely unexpected. Rossi looked at the other two men and passed some silent communication between them. Then he said, “We’re ordering dinner and then going to bed. We’ll talk about your trip home in the morning.”

I sighed in relief. So far, so good, my plan was working. Was I worried about when I faced Hotch next? Terrified. Actually, more terrified than if I had been about to face my dad in a similar situation. If Dad had been the master at the “I’m not angry, I’m disappointed” speech, Hotch was ten times better. But I had made my decision and I wasn’t backing down from it.

Morgan seemed willing to let things lie for the night, but Reid still seemed off-kilter from his usual self. It wasn’t until after we had ordered from room service that I learned why. While we were waiting for our food, Reid told me about the dreams he had been having and how they had gotten triggered by their most recent case. Morgan told me about how he had looked up the case of Riley Jenkins and how they now knew that as a little boy, Reid had known the murdered boy.

Maybe someone else would have been unable to eat while Reid, Rossi, and Morgan caught me up one what they had found that day about Reid’s father, but I was hungry enough to eat my veggie burger and fries without trouble. If I was worried about that, I couldn’t think about it right at that moment.

After we finished eating—and Morgan got in one last comment about how gutsy I was—Reid and I were left alone to talk.

“So you confronted your father eighteen years after he walked out on you?” I asked. That wasn’t all they had told me about Reid’s father, but I just didn’t want to think about the possible pedophile aspects at the moment.

“Yeah,” Reid admitted, breathing out his breath in one long sigh.

“Did he at least apologize for walking out all those years ago?”

“No.”

We sat in silence for almost a half hour before I stood up. “I’ll just head back to my room.”

“Rachel, wait.”

I turned back to Reid and saw that he was struggling with what to say and how to feel. “It means a lot to me that you were worried enough about me to come out here. And I believe you when you say you didn’t act rashly. I just…I know you’ll be in a lot of trouble over this with Hotch so I wish you hadn’t come.”

Before I could feel like he had knocked the breath out of my body, Reid went on.

“But I have no idea what I’m feeling right now. There’s so much about what’s going on that I don’t understand and for once, my memory isn’t giving me the answers. I need the truth and the ones who know the truth aren’t telling me or can’t tell me.”

There was nothing I could say to that that was insightful or comforting. So I walked over to where Reid was sitting, leaned down, and kissed the top of his head. When I straightened up, Reid reached out and grabbed my hand.

“There is some small part of me that’s glad you’re here,” he admitted. “You know how it feels to know your father left you.”

I bit my lip and nodded my head in agreement. Even given the different circumstances, Reid and I would always have this pain in common and wondering why.

“Please let me see this through to the end,” I asked quietly. “I can’t walk away now, especially now that I know what’s going on.”

For a long moment, I was afraid Reid would tell me to go home for my own good. But after awhile, he nodded his head.

“You can stay until it’s over.”

“Thank you.”

“Good night, Rachel.”

I went back to my room, locked the door, and then leaned against it for support as I took in several deep breaths. In a way, I felt infinitely better and worse now that I was here and brought up to speed. Better because I now felt justified in coming out here because there was something wrong, it was very personal, and I was needed, no matter in how small a way. 

But given that Reid was thinking that not only was his father a murderer but also a pedophile now made me sick to my stomach. I hadn’t let myself think about those details while I was eating and in front of the men. Now I was regretting every bite I had eaten. God, no matter how horrible I thought my own father was for walking out on me, it had been bad enough when I had hated Reid’s father for the same reason. If Reid was right about these new allegations, I wasn’t sure I could handle how much hatred I would feel toward him.

With a churning stomach, I unpacked my bag and cleaned up before changing into the pajamas I had packed. I felt it a dire enough emergency to grab a Sprite from the room’s mini-fridge and drank it to soothe my stomach and my nerves. It was early in the night still, but it had been a long day, so I crawled into bed.

That night, I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, wondering how this thing was going to end. I suppose the worst case scenario was that Reid was right about his father and I hadn’t known Reid to be wrong all that often. How would he react if he turned out to be right? 

I couldn’t even conceive of a best case scenario. I was afraid that nothing about this would turn out happy.


	4. Nannerl

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nannerl was Mozart's sister who was also shown off as a musical prodigy along with her brother before Mozart became THE prodigy. As Rachel and Spencer have a pseudo-sibling relationship, this pairing seemed to fit these two chapters.

The next morning I met the men down in the hotel restaurant for breakfast. I was the last one there and since neither Morgan nor Rossi brought up my departure, I figured Reid had already told them about letting me stick around. I was really hoping that one of them had already called Hotch for me; no one told me to call him myself so I was hopeful.

Remembering my reaction last night with food and the likely discussion topic, I played it safe with cereal and yogurt for breakfast and drank apple juice instead of coffee. Reid picked at his oatmeal while Rossi and Morgan demolished their eggs, potatoes, and bacon. All three of them finished two carafes of coffee together. We were finishing up when Morgan’s phone rang.

“Garcia,” he shared, glancing at the caller ID before answering. “Hold on, mama, let us get somewhere a little more private.”

_“I love it when you talk dirty,”_ she said, her voice full of innuendo.

I followed Morgan, Reid, and Rossi until we reached the very front portion of the lobby of the hotel. All the while, Morgan and Garcia kept up their flirting. I had always known Garcia’s playful side, but this was definitely new for me. With Reid distracted, I looked at Rossi and quirked my eyebrows in question. He just shook his head at me like I didn’t want to know. I trusted him.

Then Garcia turned back to the matter at hand. “ _Reid, we have been all up in your father’s business_.”

In addition to Morgan’s phone being on speaker for us, Garcia’s was on speaker with Hotch and Emily back in Quantico. As soon as I realized that, I kept quiet—not that I really would have said anything anyway.

Somewhat to my relief, Garcia’s snooping had pretty much proven that Reid’s dad didn’t show the evidence of being a pedophile. At least that was one less thing to worry about. 

_“He did have a lot of information on his computer with one common subject_ ,” Garcia hinted.

“What?” Reid asked, looking like he was bracing himself for bad news.

_“You, kiddo.”_ I could practically hear the smile in her voice. _“He’s got every article that mentions you, every article you published, he even has a copy of your dissertation.”_

“That’s got to count for something,” Rossi pointed out.

“Yeah, he Googled me,” Reid replied bitterly. “That makes up for everything.”

After Reid walked away in a huff, Morgan kept the phone line open.

_“I thought we were giving him good news,”_ Garcia said plaintively.

_“Is there anything else we can do?”_ Hotch asked.

“Yeah, run the name Gary Brendan Michaels through your system,” Morgan answered.

_“You like him for the murder?”_

“Someone does.”

_“We’ll get on it. In the mean time, give Rachel the phone. I know she’s there.”_

I pleaded with Morgan with my eyes not to abandon me, but as he rightly feared Hotch’s wrath, he did as he was told and beat a hasty retreat. Rossi stayed only long enough to wink and wish me luck before he also took his leave.

Steeling myself, I turned off the speaker on Morgan’s cell and brought it up to my ear. “Yeah, I’m here,” I said.

_“I don’t even know where to begin with you,”_ Hotch said flatly. _“This is above and beyond anything that I have come to expect from you.”_

Even if I felt guilty for putting Hotch through the anxiety I no doubt caused, I wasn’t going to back down. “Are any of my reasons for coming incorrect? I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you what I was doing, but be honest, if I had asked, you wouldn’t have let me.”

_“That is not for you to decide.”_

“Well I did. And you can’t make me come home, not when I’m eighteen years old. Really, I’m sorry that I couldn’t do this any other way, but I don’t regret it. If that means I’m grounded until I go to college, so be it.”

_“We’ll talk more when you come home.”_

I waited until I got the dial tone before I closed the phone and then tracked down Morgan and Rossi. They hadn’t gone that far, likely hovering around me so that Hotch wouldn’t come after them for not protecting me.

“So, how deep are you?” Morgan asked, pocketing his phone when I handed it over.

“Six feet and sinking,” I answered flippantly. “What do we do next and where’s Spencer?”

When we went looking for him, we found him at a set of poker screens talking to a blonde woman who was already dressed for a night out even though it was only the middle of the morning. There was something else on Reid’s face that I noticed, like a new thought had presented itself and he couldn’t quite process it yet.

But he had processed it enough that it distracted him from the woman and the $2000 he had won.

“You realize you just gave two grand to a hooker?” Rossi asked as we walked away.

“That must have been one heck of a conversation,” Morgan commented. “What did you talk about?”

“How to stop smoking,” Reid replied absently. And then he told us his plan to get answers: hypnosis.

And being Reid with his eidetic memory, he knew exactly where to find a psychologist who worked with hypnosis and witnesses for legal investigations. Morgan went off on his own to look into other leads on Michaels, so Rossi and I went with Reid to meet with Dr. Paula Driver. It seemed like once Reid accepted that I was there to stay, I was included in his “team” mentality, which meant keeping no secrets from me. Reid even surprised Dr. Driver when he requested that Rossi and I stay in the room while he was hypnotized. But Rossi said it best.

“Nothing about this is normal.”

So, not even a half hour later, I found myself seated on the arm of the chair where Rossi was sitting. Directly across from us, Reid stretched out on a couch and Dr. Driver sat in a chair right next to him. She put him under and had his hand clasped around her wrist. Then, I watched in morbid fascination as she coaxed Reid to remember a single night from when he was four years old.

Personally, I didn’t remember that age with a lot of clarity. I think it was around that time that I realized my parents weren’t typical parents. Mom and I were still living in California, my brother Alan was only just in high school, and I was starting to notice that it was odd my dad lived on the other side of the country. I don’t even remember how Mom explained that to me, just that I’ve always known it.

I thought that the hypnosis was going well—slightly disturbing, but well—until Reid started squeezing Dr. Driver’s wrist hard enough to bruise. Rossi leaped out of his chair, nearly toppling me over in the process, and knelt next to Reid’s head.

“Damn it, snap him out of it,” he said urgently.

Finally, Dr. Driver counted down from three and broke Reid out of the hypnosis. When he opened his eyes, he looked around frantically at first, maybe still caught in the images that had surfaced. But then his eyes rested on me where I had remained standing after I had almost fallen over.

“Spencer?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’m all right,” he responded automatically. It was his natural reaction to not draw attention to himself, but he hadn’t brushed me off like that in years. It told me that no matter how comfortable he was with us (the people he did consider family) he was still feeling very vulnerable too.

“Right,” Reid muttered, more to himself than anything else. 

“What did you remember?” Rossi asked, not unkindly. It was the point of this whole debacle after all.

“Bloody clothing,” Reid answered. “He was burning bloody clothing.”

From there, Reid hit the ground running, leaving me with Rossi to meet up with Morgan at the police station to bring his father in for questioning. Before I could feel abandoned, Rossi took me out for lunch.

“You okay, kiddo? It was getting a little intense there.”

The restaurant Rossi had picked was a French bistro style café with outdoor seating. Even though it was fall, Vegas temperatures were still pleasantly warm. I sipped at my passion fruit iced tea before answering.

“Is this what a case is like?” I asked in return. “You look at people and suspect them of disgusting things and then try to find the proof that you’re right?”

Rossi sighed. He and I got along well for the most part even though I’ve known him the least amount of time compared to the other team members. He had met me after I’d already gone through the worst months after Mom’s murder and Dad’s leaving. I had mostly been back to my usual self and had had the audacity to tell him off, something I doubted few people had the courage to do. I got the feeling he was still protective of me, like the others, but it wasn’t to the same degree of sheltering the others did because they _had_ seen me at my most fragile.

“Mostly, you’re right,” Rossi finally answered me. “Normally, we have the profile and then we work up a list of suspects, and then narrow down the list until we either have one or a handful of names.”

“But nothing about this is normal,” I quoted.

“No. In this case, we started with a suspect and we’re trying to see if our profile fits him.”

It struck me that as we were talking, Rossi had very carefully said, “the suspect” and not Reid’s father, or William Reid’s name. I wondered if that was how Rossi was coping with this very personal case, using non-personal descriptors.

By then our food had arrived. While I made my way through my cheddar quiche and side salad, Rossi had his own steak frites. Since we had food on the table, Rossi refused to discuss the case and instead quizzed me on my college acceptance letters.

When we were done, I went back to thinking about the implications of Reid’s recovered memories. The night before, Reid, Rossi, and Morgan had only told me that Riley Jenkins had been assaulted and murdered, but no more detailed than that. I wasn’t clamoring for details to be perfectly honest. But if Reid had seen his father burning bloody clothing, that was definitely pointing toward murder. I would find it hard to believe that William Reid had killed the little boy but hadn’t assaulted him and I wasn’t a trained profiler or investigator.

But that meant Reid’s father was a pedophile who had targeted a boy around Reid’s own age. I knew enough from listening to Dad, Reid, and Hotch to understand that it was likely Reid would also have been a target. And once again I felt sick to my stomach. I couldn’t begin to imagine how Reid felt.

“And I thought I had father issues,” I muttered under my breath. I was really feeling like this case was just not going to end well.

Rossi called to check in with Reid and Morgan. When he hung up, all I needed was the expression on his face to know the case was SNAFU. As if I needed the confirmation, what happened next told me it was getting bad enough that the men wanted me on the sidelines.

On the other hand, I was introduced to Reid’s mother, Diana. The way Rossi explained it to me as he drove me to Bennington Sanitarium, Diana had gotten upset when Reid questioned her about the bloody clothing. I didn’t disbelieve him, I just found it hard to believe that Reid really wanted me to sit with her to keep her company for the rest of the day only for her sake.

Reid himself only stayed long enough to introduce us before he went off to the next step of his investigation. 

“So you’re the young woman my son writes about,” Diana remarked casually. She was seated on a couch in the common room of the hospital, a notebook in her lap and pencil in her hand, dressed in a flowery dress and an oversized sweater.

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied. “May I sit down?”

Diana gestured to the cushion next to her. I sat down gingerly, unsure what Diana had been told about me or if she’d been told everything about the case.

“Your father was the one who convinced Spencer to join the FBI,” Diana said in the same level tone of voice.

“That’s the way I hear it,” I answered. Something told me that Diana did _not_ approve of Reid’s job. But since I had frequently wished that Dad had had another job, I could relate.

“His departure hurt Spencer very much,” Diana went on. “He never quite admitted it, but a mother knows.”

“Dad hurt a lot of people when he left,” I said bitterly, unafraid to let this woman see my own pain. I had a feeling that honesty would get farther with Diana than anything else, given Reid’s own adherence to the truth.

Diana met my eyes for the first time and despite the fact that she was paranoid schizophrenic and in a sanitarium, I couldn’t dismiss her gaze. It was clear and piercing and I definitely felt like I was being weighed and measured.

Finally, Diana nodded; I must have passed the test.

“So,” she said in a much more cheerful tone. “I understand that you’re my babysitter this afternoon.”

I smiled. “Actually, I thought you were _my_ babysitter.”

Diana grinned back.

I spent the next few hours looking through Diana’s notebooks and photo albums, playing Scrabble, and getting plenty of stories of how adorable Reid was as a child. It’s not like I resented being put in a corner while Reid, Rossi, and Morgan went on with their investigation. I felt horrible enough with what little I already knew. For me, this wasn’t about playing junior profiler. I wasn’t trying out what it felt like to be an FBI agent to see if I liked it—I knew positively that I didn’t want to sign up for the Academy.

No, this was about being there for Reid while the case was going to hell, not just hearing about it afterwards. I didn’t pretend that my presence was going to make it all better, but maybe it would do something.

The only odd moment came when a nurse came around with a tray loaded with little paper cups filled with pills.

“Not right now,” Diana dismissed the woman.

I looked up from the journal I was currently reading and caught the woman’s eye as she straightened up. She was concerned, but didn’t press the issue, moving on to the next patient in the room. I looked over at Diana, looking at her through my eyelashes.

“I’m not crazy,” Diana told me quietly. “I know what I’m doing.”

I frowned. “I wasn’t thinking that.”

She shrugged. “It’s necessary.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I pointed at one of the pictures in the album in Diana’s lap. “Tell me about this one, is that Spencer’s birthday?”

By the time I had heard the accompanying story, a man came up to us and perched on the chair arm across from our couch. He ignored me for the moment and focused on his patient.

“I understand you’re refusing medication,” he said.

“I’m just holding off for a little while,” Diana explained.

“You understand what will happen?” he asked.

“Tremors, the voices,” Diana said. “But just before that, a moment of clarity, when the fog lifts. I really need that clarity right now.”

Watching the interplay between Diana and her doctor, I was reminded that she had been here for almost ten years. I wondered if he was the closest thing Diana had to a friend in here. That relationship obviously went both ways, based on what her doctor said next.

“I can give you some leeway here,” he assured her. “Just tell me why.”

Diana looked down at a picture of her and Reid when he had to have been four or five years old.

“I need to remember,” she said.

The doctor left and I looked over at Diana.

“You’re trying to remember what happened,” I realized. “To see if it really happened the way Reid thinks it did.”

“Yes,” Diana confirmed.

I considered if there was some cosmic balance that made it so that Reid needed hypnosis to remember what happened and that Diana needed to come off her drugs to do the same thing. 

“Do you think Spencer is right about his father?” I asked cautiously.

“No, but that’s why I need to remember.”

There wasn’t anything else I could say to that, so I gestured to the photo album again.

“Maybe telling me more stories will help jog something,” I suggested.

Diana reached out and placed her hand on my shoulder and squeezed.

“Spencer was always a special child,” Diana told me. “When he was two years old, I saw found him reading one of my poetry books…”

I heard a lot about Reid’s childhood in the next couple of hours as we flipped through the pages of the album. I stopped her when I saw a picture of Reid seated at a chessboard.

“For a long time, I only ever played chess against Spencer or my father,” I told Diana. “I thought I was so terrible since both of them beat me every time. Then one day, I played a kid at school who was supposed to be really good and I finally won.”

“Yes, Spencer was always good at chess,” Diana explained. “Even as a child, he would play against adults and win…”

Diana trailed off and looked up to stare off into the distance.

“Diana?” I asked.

“There was a man once who played him,” she said vaguely. “He was, off somehow, there was something wrong with him. I knew he was a predator. And then the next week, Riley Jenkins was murdered.”

“Predator, you mean a child predator? A pedophile?” I questioned urgently.

“Yes,” Diana said. She suddenly looked back at me, determination in her eyes. “We need to get to Spencer. I know what happened.”

“I don’t have a car, I’ll have to call Rossi,” I said, pulling out my phone.

“No, I know who to call,” Diana interrupted. “Dial this number.”

I punched in the number that Diana dictated and waited for the other end of the line to pick up.

_“This is William Reid.”_

My eyebrows just about shot up into my hairline and I shot a glare at Diana for putting me on the spot.

“Hello, my name is Rachel Gideon, I’m calling on behalf of Diana Reid,” I explained. I had to trust there was a reason Diana had me calling Reid’s father.

_“Diana? Is she all right?”_

I guess it counted for something that that was his first reaction.

“Yes, only she’s asking to be driven to the police station to see your son, Spencer.”

William Reid didn’t ask me anything else, he just said that he would be there in fifteen minutes.

I went and got Diana’s jacket from her room at her instruction and then met her at the front desk. When I saw Reid’s father, I realized that Reid took more after his mother than his father, but the family resemblance was still there.

There was a whole unspoken dialogue going one between Diana and William that I couldn’t even begin to follow. Suddenly, I wondered if they had ever gotten divorced after he had walked out or if they were still technically married. No wonder Reid and I had so much in common with both of us having such unique relationships between our parents.

Diana introduced me to William after he checked her out from the hospital. He didn’t pay much attention to me and was focused on getting to Reid. With Diana claiming her memory returned and obviously trusting her husband to get us to the police station, it no longer seemed possible that he was a pedophile and a murderer. 

When we got to the station, I took point and searched around the bull pen area for one of my agents. I spotted Rossi standing outside a set of rooms. I led the Reids over.

“She’s remembered,” I told Rossi quickly.

“Reid and Morgan are questioning Lou Jenkins,” Rossi explained, gesturing over his shoulder.

There was a detective there who immediately opened the door. I could look around him and saw Reid spin around to face us, an alien look on his face. At least, alien to me.

“Do not interfere with this interrogation, detective!” he snapped.

Diana pushed herself forward, William not far behind her.

“Spencer, it was me.”

It wasn’t until Reid went off to a private office with both his parents before Rossi brought me up to date. While I had been playing Scrabble and getting blackmail on Reid, the agents had discovered that Gary Brendan Michaels had been the one who had assaulted and killed Riley. They found what was left of Michaels’ body across state lines and isolated a fingerprint which was matched to Lou Jenkins, Riley’s father.

And now the last pieces were falling into place. Diana had been right about the man who she called a predator who had played chess with Reid one day. That had been Michaels. She then went along with Jenkins one night and ID’ed him for the grieving father. And then Lou Jenkins did what most other fathers would do: he beat the living crap out of the pervert who had hurt and killed his son. Diana had been there and had gotten blood on her clothing, the same bloody clothing that Reid remembered his father burning in the back yard the next day.

After that, the Reids moved to a different neighborhood and some years later, William Reid walked out on his wife and son.

“What happens now?” I asked Rossi while Morgan was talking with Detective Yarborough and Reid was still talking with his parents.

“Lou Jenkins will be charged with murder,” he answered grimly. “Maybe he can plead it down to manslaughter.”

“And?” I prompted. Callous as it sounded, I wasn’t worried about what would happen now with the Jenkins and Michaels.

Rossi caught the hint. “We go home.”

I nodded in relief. 

“And then we go straight to the hospital,” Rossi continued. “JJ had her baby today.”

I looked at him in shock before I burst out laughing. “Really?”

Rossi smiled. “Baby boy named Henry.”

Rossi, Morgan, and I went back to the hotel to pack up our things while Reid and his father drove Diana back to Bennington. We then met Reid at the airstrip and I got to ride on the BAU’s private jet on the way home. I found myself seated next to Reid on the couch.

I could tell that he was still really shaken by everything that had happened that day and I wasn’t sure at first if I should let him process in silence or if he would want a distraction. But there was something that I had been thinking of, on and off, all day long.

“Hey, Spencer?” I asked hesitantly.

From the way he looked up at me quickly, I guessed that he was grateful I had broken the silence.

I took in a deep breath and then took a chance. “Do you think it will be twenty years before I see my dad again?”

A shadow passed across his face and I wondered if I shouldn’t have said anything; Dad’s departure had been almost as painful for Reid as it had been for me. But from the way Reid sat and thought about my question, I knew he had probably been thinking the same thing as me.

“I really don’t know, Rachel,” he finally answered. “I never thought I’d see my dad again in my life. I suppose I could have looked for him years ago, it’s not like I didn’t have the resources or that he was trying to hide.”

For the first time in a year, I gathered the courage to ask my next question. “Did you look for him? Dad, I mean. Did you or Hotch or Garcia ever look for him after he left?”

Last year, it had been bad enough for me to know Dad had abandoned me and I thought I was essentially orphaned and homeless. I hadn’t wanted to know where he had gone or if anyone was searching for him. I think a part of me didn’t want to know that he had been found but still refused to return. The gifts I received at Christmas and my birthday a month ago were the only proof we had that Dad was even alive.

There was a long time of silence between us. I had given up on an answer when Reid spoke again.

“We did for months in between cases before we realized just how much he didn’t want to be found. He even dropped off Garcia’s radar though she still has alerts set up to monitor if he surfaces again.”

I wasn’t really surprised. There couldn’t really be any other explanation.

Reid sighed heavily. “I’m not sure what I’ll do if he ever does come back. I didn’t exactly handle confronting my own father after all these years very well.”

I thought of how insistent Reid had been that his father was a pedophile, a murderer, and then an accessory and basically just needed something to have to accuse his dad. Maybe I was at least secure in the knowledge that I didn’t have any repressed memories like Reid’s, but my own real memories were bad enough.

“Can I tell you a secret? I don’t think I’ll handle it well if Dad ever comes back either.”

Reid wrapped his arm around my shoulders and I leaned in toward him, drawing my legs up onto the couch. Reid reached with his other arm into his battered leather messenger bag and pulled out two books. The first was some text on genetics that he kept for himself and the other he handed to me: Tolkein’s _The Fellowship of the Ring_.

I hadn’t even made it to the council of Elrond by the time we landed. Rossi and Morgan headed off to their homes while Reid drove me to the hospital where Hotch, Garcia, and Emily were still visiting with JJ, Will, and baby Henry. I would have thought Reid would want to head home himself—God knew he had a lot to process—while Rossi was appointed the escort to my sentencing, but Reid and JJ were friends.

The last time I had been to a hospital, Garcia had been shot. Even though we were there for happy reasons this time around, I still felt the bottom drop out of my stomach at the triggering smell of antiseptic.

We found all of our group gathered around JJ’s bed while the blonde woman was holding her infant son. 

“Is there room for more?” Reid asked, hesitating in the doorway with me at his side.

Everyone else turned around to look at his while JJ invited us inside.

“How is I just went through labor and you look worse than I do?” JJ asked Reid.

I had to smile as Reid responded absolutely honestly, “Don’t be ridiculous, you look beautiful.”

There was some look that passed between JJ and Will (I’d only met him once over the summer at a department baseball game) before the man looked around at everyone and offered to buy coffee.

Reid moved closer to JJ and Henry and I might have stuck around too to get a proper look at the little guy but Hotch took me firmly by the arm and walked me outside.

“We’ll catch up,” he told the others.

Emily and Garcia shot me identical looks of sympathy but followed Will down the hall toward the vending machines. Hotch and I were left alone in the hallway.

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t apologize because I didn’t regret what I had done and I wouldn’t insult Hotch by saying something I didn’t believe just to get out of trouble. I didn’t tell him any of my reasons again because I had already explained myself and repetition also wouldn’t get me out of trouble. I only stood there, waiting for him to pronounce judgment.

I was absolutely shocked when Hotch simply reached out and wrapped his hand around the back of my neck and pulled me in for a tight embrace. I wrapped my own arms around him and stood there.

He didn’t need to say how worried he had been or that he never wanted me to do something like this again. I knew I would be on probation for a long time. We would probably talk out the details once we got home that night. But that conversation didn’t need to happen here.

After we let each other go, I saw that the door to JJ’s room was still open. After a quick questioning glance at Hotch, I walked over and poked my head in. I saw Reid was holding Henry and was looking at the infant like he was a miracle.

“Come on in, Rachel,” JJ said.

I entered the room and came to stand next to Reid.

“Rachel, this is my godson, Henry,” Reid said, still sounding awestruck at the whole thing.

I remembered all the things I had been thinking about when Jack was born. Here was another little boy who would learn that monsters existed in the real world and that sometimes you had to sacrifice the time of one of your parent’s for those monsters to be caught.

Reid handed Henry over to me with JJ and Hotch looking on and smiling.

“Hi, Henry,” I said. There were all the warnings I could give the little tyke, but those could always wait. “You are probably one of the luckiest little boys in the world because your family is going to look out for you and protect you for the rest of your life.”

I looked at Reid and Hotch especially.

“Your family is made up of heroes.”


	5. Classicism

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ....apparently I cannot be trusted with weekly updates for something that's already written, so to make up for it, I'm just posting everything.

_Related episode: 4.08 Masterpiece_

_Classicism - the period of music history which dates from the mid-1800s and lasted approximately 60 years with a strong regard for order and balance_

Just because I had a stack of college acceptance letters didn’t mean I stopped my college visits. But while the long road trips I had taken with Emily, the local colleges and universities I visited on my own now that I knew better what I was looking for.

The closest university to me, Strader, was also the closest to the FBI Academy in Quantico which meant it was one of the major recruiting places for the FBI. And that’s how I ended up visiting the campus on the same day that Reid and Rossi were there for that very purpose.

I was really only looking at the campus to consider taking classes there over the summer so that I could transfer general education credits to whatever university I ending up choosing. For laughs and giggles, I snuck into the room where Reid and Rossi were giving their presentation.

Everything they said, I knew already, but I was in stitches at Reid’s attempt at his comedy routine. I said as much once the presentation and question session were over and the agents were making their way out the door.

“Spencer, you would have been better off telling Star Trek jokes,” I teased. “And even those wouldn’t have gone over great.”

Rossi agreed with me. “You do know we actually want them to join the Bureau?”

“They keep sending me out on these things, I don’t know why,” Reid protested.

“You’re young,” Rossi explained.

“And there’s the whole boy genius thing,” I added. Then I frowned, thinking about the expressions on the college students’ faces when Reid had listed off his three doctorates and two BAs. “But that actually comes off as a little bit intimidating.”

“Doctor Reid?”

Reid, Rossi, and I turned around from where we had been headed down the stairs. Behind us on the top step still was an older man, about Rossi’s age, with long white hair, glasses, and wearing a white suit.

“Wouldn’t they sit in the dark and hope that the bulb had decided to light again?” the man asked.

Reid looked just as confused as I felt. “Excuse me?”

“An existentialist would never change the bulb,” the man explained calmly. “He would allow the darkness to exist.”

I raised my eyebrows at Rossi as Reid figured out that the man was offering another punch line to Reid’s joke from earlier.

“I am Professor Rothchild,” the man introduced himself, following us as we continued down the stairs. He spoke mostly to Reid as Rossi and I were ahead of them.

“May I show you something?” the professor asked once we reached the bottom. “Everything you need is right here,” he said, showing Reid a black folder. Before Reid could open it, Professor Rothchild looked me over from top to bottom in a way that made me shiver. “Perhaps it is not a sight fit for such a beautiful young woman.”

“Whatever it is, I’m sure she’s seen worse,” Rossi commented a little aggressively.

I looked at him in confusion. I had never really seen Rossi’s “agent” mode, but I had a feeling that I was looking at it right now. That plus the uneasy feeling this guy was giving me put me even more on alert.

Rothchild hummed noncommittally and handed over the folder. 

Inside the folder, I saw only strange pictures of women with blurry hands and faces and bulb flashes in the background.

“I don’t understand,” Reid said. “What are these?”

“Seven homicide victims,” Rothchild explained serenely, his hands folded neatly in front of his chest. “Seven women, their bodies have never been found. Not a fingernail, not a hair fiber. Acid is a very tidy way of disposing of something.”

“Acid?” Rossi repeated. He very carefully maneuvered me until I was half hidden behind him.

“Are you saying that you killed these women?” Reid asked.

“There’s still time to save the others,” Rothchild said instead of directly answering the questions. “Five more.”

Rothchild looked me over again. On the same floor, I noticed that he was about an inch shorter than I was and I wasn’t exactly an Amazon warrior. There was something very wrong in his eyes, like I was nothing more than a butterfly he was considering for pining on a piece of cardboard, admiration and measurement all mixed together.

“What do you mean?”

“In less than nine hours, five other people are going to be dead. Unless, you can find a way to save them.”

Rothchild took the photos out of Reid’s hand and then flung them up into the air where they drifted down to cover the floor. 

I might not have understood everything that was going on, but I knew enough to slip away and track down campus security. It also got me away from Rothchild who was seriously creeping me out. The uniformed officers came with me as soon as I explained that the FBI agents on campus had discovered a possible serial killer.

“A young woman as intelligent as she is beautiful,” Rothchild said to me when we returned. “Perfect.”

Yeah, this guy really needed to stop talking to me. When I had been face to face with a serial killer before, I had been terrified almost to the point of catatonia. I hadn’t had the nerve to confront Frank while he had held me captive. If Rothchild kept this up, I was going to get unnerved enough to _make_ him back off because I wasn’t the frightened child I was that night any more. 

“Let’s go,” Rossi ordered as one of the officers cuffed Rothchild.

“I’ll, uh, call you later, okay?” Reid told me as he hurried after them.

And just like that, I was left standing alone in a campus lobby, surrounded by the students who had gathered to watch. I did the only thing I could do: I pulled out my phone and dialed my friend Michael.

“Hey, want to hear about my totally creep-tastic morning?”

Thirty minutes later, I was meeting Michael at Five Guys for lunch. He was dressed in his usual jeans and tee shirt with a flannel shirt on top. But unlike the clothing he had worn when we had first met, which were always old, worn, and faded, this clothing was new even if it was likely from thrift stores. With his own income that Michael made working at Leonard’s Auto Shop, he could finally buy himself the clothing he couldn’t afford or get from his father.

“So what was so creepy about Strader?” Michael asked after we had ordered and snagged a table. “Sorority cults? Ritual sacrifice practiced by the Ancient Religions class?”

“Try a serial killer that walked up to Reid and Rossi after their recruiting presentation, told them about his victims and taunted them that there were more out there that will die by the end of today,” I explained succinctly. 

“You’re actually serious,” Michael said, sounding surprised.

I smirked. “Wish I weren’t. Actually, the creepy part was that he kept calling me beautiful.”

Michael frowned. “Bet Reid and Rossi just _loved_ that.”

“I’m surprised I don’t have an FBI escort right now with the way he was looking at me,” I commented. “Then again, they took him away in custody, so I guess they figure I’m safe.”

We were interrupted when Michael went up to get our order. I used to eat Five Guys cheeseburgers with joy, but the pseudo-vegetarian diet I was on after watching my mother get butchered left me with grilled cheese or grilled veggie sandwiches for my eating options. Michael set down the brown paper bag and set out his burger with the works, my veggie sandwich and the order of fries we would share.

“You okay?” Michael asked after a couple minutes of silent eating.

I had expected the question. Whenever this Rothchild was taken care of, Reid or Rossi, or even Hotch would probably ask me the same thing. As I had even thought while standing in front of the professor, I had been face to face with a serial killer before. And yes, I was feeling reminded of Frank Breitkoff.

“More or less,” I answered Michael. “I mean, I’m not going to say I’m totally okay because I’m not. And I certainly never want to be in the same room as that guy ever again even with the whole BAU team between us.”

Michael was smart and left it at that. He changed the subject to what Strader had to offer in the way of classes. I tried once again to get him to consider attending a four-year college and Michael explained once again about his grades and lack of funds. 

“Vocational school for mechanics and auto repair, that’s good enough for me,” he repeated himself. We’d had this conversation multiple times over the past several months.

“All right,” I finally conceded. At least it would be something and auto repair was something Michael did genuinely enjoy doing.

“Come on, let’s get out of here,” Michael said with a smile, pleased that I had let him win the argument but not wanting to rub it in my face. “I’ve got a new project to work on and I bet you want to check in with Reid and Hotch.”

“It’s a little scary how well you know me sometimes,” I complained as we stood up, gathered our garbage, and threw it out on our way out the door.

Michael shrugged. “You’re not that hard to figure out sometimes.”

I pushed him in protest and couldn’t help but smile as he staggered outrageously.

“So what’s the new project?” I asked.

“It’s a surprise.”

I looked over at him sidelong as we walked to our cars but his expression was carefully blank. Smug, but otherwise blank.

“Fine, be that way,” I pouted. “See if I give you cookies the next time I bake a batch.”

Michael brought his hand up to his chest. “Ouch. That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?”

I shook my head. We both knew I would never follow through on the threat. After Michael drove away, I checked my phone, saw there were no messages, so I sent off a text of my own to Reid, Hotch, and Garcia. _Any update on the creepy professor?_

I didn’t get a response right away so I figured they were busy with said creepy professor. Unfortunately, I didn’t have work in the afternoon to keep me busy and I was all caught up on my homework. Finally, I went to the library for about an hour and checked a veritable stack of books to take home with me.

And then I couldn’t resist any longer. I drove to the BAU to see what was going on.

If I wasn’t supposed to be there, Hotch or somebody would send me home, but some part of me wanted to see the monster trapped behind glass. This was what the team did: they hunted the monsters, trapped them, and studied them. A year and a half ago, I had sat in a private room of the Smithsonian museum and watched my father and Garcia dissect the behavior of the monster who had butchered my mother, to hunt him and study him. Before that, I was present in a rundown farmhouse in Georgia, sitting around and watching the team take the house apart in order to find and capture the delusional psychopath who had abducted Reid.

But never before had I seen one captured. Reid had shot Hankel, Frank had leapt in front of a train. Maybe it was morbid fascination, maybe it was just wanting to understand this aspect of the job that had consumed my father and that was still the largest part of the people I called family.

The bullpen was somewhat empty, but I spotted Agent Kyle Anderson at his desk, the poor guy who was often assigned to be my chauffeur whenever Hotch felt I needed to be driven somewhere.

“Rachel, what are you doing here?”

“I was with Reid and Rossi today,” I explained.

Anderson’s face lit up with understanding.

“Well, Agent Rossi is with the suspect in interrogation. Agent Hotchner and the rest of the team has flown to the suspect’s house to rescue the woman and children he abducted this morning.”

I sighed in relief. I hadn’t even known about the woman and children, though I was certain they were the “five more” that Rothchild had mentioned.

“So it’s almost over,” I said. I knew that not every case took days, but it seemed strange that in the time it took for me to eat lunch with Michael and go to the library, Rossi and the others had apparently figured out Rothchild’s game. I could develop an inferiority complex very easily around these people.

I looked up when I heard lots of footsteps coming our way and saw the very white form of Professor Rothchild between two suited agents who were leading him away in handcuffs. Rossi was walking behind them but veered off in our direction when he noticed me.

“Is the monster going to the dungeon?” I asked.

“In chains,” Rossi answered. “And we’ll throw away the key.”

“Good,” I said fervently. I still hadn’t forgotten how disturbing it had been to have him call me beautiful and perfect. “Hotch and the others are okay?”

“On their way back by helicopter. They should be back in about an hour.” Rossi nodded his head up the stairs toward his office. “Come on up. Let’s see if you can convince Hotch that every single piece of paperwork doesn’t have to all be done today.”

I followed Rossi up the stairs to his office that despite the fact it used to be my father’s, I had been in much less that Hotch’s office. Actually, this was the first time I’d been in there since Rossi had moved in and only the second time in my life. The last time when it had been my father’s office, the table with pictures of the victims he had saved had dominated the room, something that disturbed me to this day. 

With Rossi, I felt like I was in a den room, with his desk and leather furniture and full bookshelves. Masculine and comfortable but professional with no overt displays of the team’s cases. It was certainly an improvement in my opinion.

Rossi retrieved a can of Coke from a mini-fridge underneath his desk and handed it to me before I sat down on the couch. I popped the top and took a sip, watching Rossi carefully as he took his own seat. To anyone else, his behavior was normal, controlled and calm as usual. But I had a lot of practice in reading body language now and I could tell that something had cracked his composure.

“I would have thought Reid would have interrogated the professor,” I said. “He was focused on him so much.”

“That’s the reason I led the interrogation,” Rossi told me. “We thought we were denying him what he wanted.”

There. A slight twitch in Rossi’s eye told me something was off about his explanation.

“Did it work?” I asked, figuring it was the most general question that could get me an answer.

Rossi sighed. “It turns out that Rothchild wanted me in the room with him along. All of this was a ploy to get back at me for his brother.”

“What about his brother?”

“His brother was a serial killer I had caught years ago. His life fell apart after and he blames me for it.”

I thought about that for a moment but I couldn’t figure it out.

“How does murdering seven women and confronting you get him revenge?” I asked. “Unless it was just to rub your face in it?”

Rossi shook his head. “No. The murdered women were to get our attention. The woman and children he abducted were to set a trap for the team.”

“A trap,” I repeated, dreading where this was going.

“The house he set up was booby-trapped,” Rossi explained. “It was meant to take out the team.”

“Your family,” I corrected. “You took away his family, he would take away yours.”

Rothchild had certainly done his research after all. This was probably the best revenge he could have planned as I could easily see. I was certain the booby trap at the house where the team had gone would have killed them. I didn’t bother to ask what it was; it was enough for me to know that whatever way they had caught on to the trick, it was done and they were coming home.

“It could have been worse,” Rossi said in the silence as I processed the day’s events fresh with Rothchild’s revenge in mind. 

I frowned. “What could have been worse than killing the team?”

Rossi looked at me gravely. He didn’t pause to think if he should tell me whatever horrible thing he knew like the others would have. He just told me.

“It could have been you,” he said. “The women he killed were young, brunette. He watched them and learned their schedules and attacked when their guard was down. You fit his type and Rothchild knew about you as much as the rest of us before he showed up today.”

Rossi let me sit and realize on my own that Rothchild could have targeted me to get his revenge. Anyone who figured out that to hurt Rossi best was to take out the people he cared about wouldn’t have that much farther to look to find me.

Last year, I had doubted how much I meant to Hotch, Reid, Garcia, and the rest of the team. Now, I knew that however much I cared for them, they cared about me. And I knew better than anyone else what happened to an FBI agent who lost someone close to them because of one of the criminals they hunted.

And this wasn’t the first time I fit a serial killer’s victimology.

“What do you know about the last case my dad worked?” I asked Rossi.

If he was surprised by the non sequitor, he didn’t show it. “Not much,” he answered.

“The victims were college girls, brunettes,” I explained. “It was Dad’s first case back after my mom was killed, not even four months later.” Here I hesitated, but I went on anyway. “In his letter, he told me that all the girls reminded him of me _and_ my mom.”

“And he left,” Rossi said, not unkindly.

“He couldn’t handle it,” I agreed. “The case reminded him of when he and my mom met at college and that I was close to the girls’ ages. And I’m pretty sure he was thinking that if had never met Mom, she would be alive.”

“Is that what you think too?” Rossi asked.

I looked up sharply and saw Rossi looking at me intently.

“I used to,” I answered honestly. “I mean, if Dad hadn’t gone after Frank, he wouldn’t have gone after us. If Dad hadn’t let Frank go, he wouldn’t have been free to murder Mom. It’s really hard not to think that.”

“And now?”

I sighed and gulped down some Coke. It had taken me months of therapy sessions with Garcia and her victim group and my own writing in my journal to help me understand what I felt. This was the first time actually that I was saying this stuff out loud to someone other than my cat.

“It wasn’t Dad’s fault that Mom died,” I said finally. “It wasn’t his fault that Frank targeted us.” I looked up and met Rossi’s eyes squarely. “Just like it wouldn’t have been your fault if Rothchild had decided to come after me. If ever I am targeted by a psychopath with a grudge, it will be his fault, not Hotch’s or Reid’s or yours. You all are only doing your jobs to make everyone else safer. Anything those bastards chose to do is on them.”

Because what I had realized after all my venting and bitching and screaming and wondering was that I didn’t have to forgive my father for my mother’s death because it wasn’t his fault. But I know that Dad won’t ever forgive himself and that I won’t ever forgive him for leaving me—that was his fault.

“That’s a very mature attitude,” Rossi commented.

I smirked. “It took a lot to get me to it, believe me.”


	6. Con Moto

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be some crossover elements with this chapter, courtesy of Bones, because the crime-solving premise and the similar geography can't be resisted. So, if you are unfamiliar with this show, it's really only important to know there's a team of forensic scientists at the Jeffersonian Institute who assist the FBI in solving crimes.
> 
> And I may have enjoyed writing Hotch and Booth's interactions a little too much. And Rachel dealing another federal agent. And there's an extra scene which I'll be posting in another work that's meant to follow up as well.

_Related episode: 4.09 52 Pick-up_

_Don Juan - meaning "with motion" usually in regards to a lively, up beat tempo or speed_

“When was the last time you went out and had fun?”

That I had to actually think for several moments in order to answer Garcia effectively answered the question anyway.

“Last year?” I guessed. “Unless you count the strike party for the musical, which since it happened on school grounds doesn’t really count.”

It was Friday morning and I was taking advantage of having a three day weekend by meeting Garcia, Emily, and JJ for coffee at the Crown. Garcia and Emily were also taking advantage of my day off to take the morning off themselves and JJ was taking a break from Henry by leaving him at home for Will to manage. Joining us was Jordan Todd, the agent who was taking over for JJ while she was on her maternity leave. We were reigning supreme at the table in the front window with mochas, pastries, and omelets for a friendly brunch.

We had already covered the new baby photos from JJ and an update on Garcia’s ongoing relationship with Kevin Lynch. Emily asked me more about my college choices and did help me eliminate some of my options. But now apparently, I was going to be interrogated about my social life, or lack thereof.

“You are only eighteen once,” Garcia admonished me. “You should be going out with friends having fun! You’re too serious, chica.”

I rolled my eyes. “My best friend is a guy who is more serious than I am. I have homework and band practice and work. I like spending my few free nights just reading at home or listening to music.”

“But you’re turning into a shut-in!” the tech goddess admonished me. She looked at her co-workers for support. “Don’t you think she needs some frivolity in her life?”

JJ smiled apologetically at me and said, “It wouldn’t hurt, Rachel. A night out, a little dancing or a concert, it would do you good.”

I appealed to Emily. “Et tu?”

“No one is saying that you should suddenly become a party girl,” the brunette woman elaborated. “We’re just concerned that you don’t have any, lightness, in your life. No sense of adventure or excitement.”

“Excitement in my life is the last thing I need,” I said callously, thinking of all the drama that made up my life on a weekly basis near about.

“Which is why you need to make your own positive excitement,” Garcia argued firmly.

“You might just enjoy it,” Emily pointed out dryly.

“You remember one of those first nights we went a couple years ago?” JJ asked with a wicked smile on her face.

“Oh, Brad,” Garcia and Emily said together.

I raised my eyebrows and glanced between the women. “From the gleam in your eyes, there’s a good story there. Tell.”

“Some idiot at the bar where we were decided to impersonate an FBI agent to come on to us,” Emily explained.

“So we all played along until we asked to see his badge,” Garcia continued. “When he couldn’t show us, we showed him all of ours.”

“Oh, the look on his face as he skittered away!” JJ laughed.

I laughed just thinking about it.

“But that is nothing compared to Emily and Jordan’s performance with _Viper_ ,” Garcia added salaciously. 

“Well?” I demanded. “Don’t leave me hanging, what happened?”

“For our last case we had to profile this guy who was teaching classes on how to be a ladies’ man,” Emily told me.

“And you didn’t send Morgan in?” JJ asked.

“Not that kind of ladies’ man,” Emily clarified. “I’m talking about the kind where you start as a dork and learn how to be smooth.”

“So we had to bait Viper with someone he thought he could outsmart and he had already targeted me,” Emily explained.

“If he called himself Viper, I’m guessing that he was ‘smooth’ in a sleazy way,” I guessed.

Garcia tapped her turquoise painted fingertip on her nose to tell me I was right. Jordan and Emily then shared every single detail of their club baiting as the rest of us tried not to laugh.

“And women actually fall for lines like Viper’s?” I asked incredulously.

“Not everyone is as discerning as you are, chica,” Garcia told me. “Which is why I don’t worry at all about you at a club.”

Damn, the woman was uncanny at returning to a conversation, even after I had thought she had been derailed by the Viper story.

If I thought I would be saved by the arrival of Natasha Morris, my closest friend after Michael, daughter of my boss, and co-owner of the Crown Café, with a plate of fresh chocolate croissants, I would be wrong.

“If you’re looking to get out, I’m meeting some girlfriends at a club tomorrow night,” Natasha offered, setting down the plate. She looked at the three federal agents sitting next to me and went on, “Minimum age is eighteen, they always check IDs, and anyone underage gets stamped so they can’t order alcohol.”

“What club?” Emily asked.

“Club Sapphire, on L Street in DC,” Natasha answered, then she looked at me. “Local bands, a dance floor and lounge furniture, nothing too wild. We need to start you off easy since you’re so out of practice for having fun,” she teased.

I rolled my eyes. “Thank you so much. What would I do without a friend like you?”

“Grow up to be a crazy cat-lady,” Natasha answered promptly.

My fate was sealed.

“Come over to my apartment tomorrow and we’ll all get ready together,” Natasha ordered me.

“I think all of you are forgetting one insurmountable fact,” I pointed out. “My guardian, Aaron Hotchner? After the stunt I pulled in Vegas, do you really think that he’s going to allow me to go out to a club?”

Sure, I wasn’t technically, officially grounded, but I was under the impression that I had better be on my best behavior or I would get an FBI agent tailing my every more until I graduated high school. And even then…

“I’ll take care of Hotch,” Garcia promised.

I was suddenly very worried for Hotch if he tried to say no. Garcia with a determined look on her face was a sight to behold and her title of tech goddess was not lightly given.

And sure enough, when Hotch came home after work that day, he gave me his permission to go with Natasha. He waited until we were eating dinner before he explained why he had said yes.

“They have a point,” Hotch said as he put together his plate of food.

It was often interesting to cook for the two of us, considering I still didn’t eat meat, but Hotch did. At this point, I was better about being able to cook the meat, I just couldn’t consume it. Tonight I had made twice baked potatoes with cheese and roasted broccoli and had put a pork chop for Hotch into the oven to cook along with the rest of the meal.

“So you think I need to remember how to have fun too?” I asked and poured us both glasses of iced tea.

“It’s not that, exactly,” he argued. “But I worry about you too. You used to have more friends and spend time with them. I can’t remember the last time you went out with a group and actually acted like a teenager.”

I raised my eyebrows. “I thought you liked it that I didn’t act like a teenager,” I pointed out.

Hotch sighed. “Am I glad that you don’t get in trouble or talk back or lock yourself in your bedroom, that you are mature and sensible? Yes, of course. But you should have more in your life than homework, a job, and waiting around for me or Reid to come home from a case.”

I couldn’t challenge that since it was too close to the truth.

“Just try for one night to forget that you aren’t exactly a typical teenager.”

So I had my marching orders that took me to Natasha’s apartment the next day. Her friend Lindsay was already there and fussing over Natasha’s hair.

“Rachel, Lindsay, Lindsay, Rachel,” Natasha introduced quickly.

I smiled in greeting and took in this new girl. Where Natasha was slim and blonde, Lindsay was plump and dark-haired.

“You’re next,” she told me, her hands deftly twisting Natasha’s hair into coils that twined around each other and she secured with bobby pins.

“Lindsay is a hair dresser downtown,” Natasha explained. While her friend worked on her head, Natasha was doing her make up in the mirror.

From then on, the preparation was almost clichéd. Once Lindsay was finished with Natasha, it was my turn. Lindsay thankfully didn’t do much to my hair beyond taking some from the front and braiding it to stay out of my face. Meanwhile, Natasha insisted on doing my make up, but she only darkened my eyes with eyeliner but used pale gold shadow. She also gave me dark pink lipstick with some shimmer.

After that, we turned to clothes. I hadn’t known what to wear really, but Natasha had ordered me to bring some of the clothes that I had bought when we had gone shopping months earlier at her insistence. Once she was dressed in her own green skirt, silver and black corset-top, and black fishnet tights, she picked out my clothes for me. Soon, I was wearing a pair of tight black jeans and a dark pink tank top with a gold sheer shirt over it and black boots on my feet. Lindsay had a yellow dress that gathered at her waist with a wide black belt that flattered her curves.

Natasha drove us in her cherry-red Volkswagon and managed to find a parking spot about two blocks away from the club. The line was about twenty people long at the door, but it moved quickly and soon we were inside. Once inside, the music swamped me like a curtain, heavy on the guitar and vocals sung by both a guy and a girl. Lindsay peeled off almost immediately but I saw her meet up with some other girls who all waved over at Natasha—obviously more of their circle of friends.

“Come on,” Natasha spoke loudly over the music. “Let’s get something to drink.”

At the bar, Natasha ordered a round of drinks, apparently ordering for the rest of the group at the same time. I was the only Coke among the margaritas, cosmopolitans, and beers. Only then did Natasha lead me over to Lindsay and the other girls who had already claimed a table and introduced me around.

And I’ll admit this, I did find I was enjoying myself. The music wasn’t quite to my tastes, but it wasn’t grating or abrasive either and the melody of the singing was actually good. Natasha’s other friends didn’t seem to mind I was tagging along and welcomed me into the group dynamic easily. If I was being treated like the kid sister of the group, at least they were genuinely nice about it.

Natasha, Lindsay, Corinne, and Jessie were all in their early twenties and had gone to high school together. They teased each other, drank together, danced together, and they made sure that I was right along with them. And even though I drank Cokes and water throughout the night, they all let me sip some of their drinks.

“You’ll be in college next year any way,” Natasha rationalized. “And we’re being careful. Just don’t tell your FBI friends, right?”

Like I needed to be told _that_. And we were careful in ways that I knew even my father would have wanted. If anyone still had drinks on the table, then someone was always there to guard them when everyone else went off to dance. No one was ever alone and we even all tried to stay in eyesight of everyone else too. Some people would call us paranoid, I thought of it as Safe Girl 101.

By eleven o’clock, the club was packed and I was just about ready to call it a night. Natasha and Corinne convinced me to go out for one last dance before Natasha would drive me home. I wasn’t a great dancer, having very little experience, but the other girls made it fun and easy.

It was so packed and so loud, that I didn’t understand the shouted words until it was practically right next to me.

_“Po-lice!” “Five-o!” “Move! Move!”_

Suddenly, the crowd of dancers turned into a confused mob and I was spun around as people shoved past me. I tried to keep my feet and keep an eye out for Natasha or Corinne or Lindsay, but we got separated.

I had just spotted Corinne’s bright red hair when someone body-checked me, knocking me flat on the floor at the mercy of hundreds of pounding feet. I rolled to my side and curled in, trying to protect my head and abdomen, but it seemed like the crowd cleared immediately after I had fallen. At least, that’s what I thought until I risked raising my head and saw who now surrounded me.

Given the suits, flack vests, and the fact that we were in DC, I knew the half dozen adults around me had to be FBI, bearing down with their guns drawn and aimed at the guy I could recognize as the one who had bumped into me. The agents followed him into the crowd, leaving me in the cleared out space with the person I hadn’t noticed before, a woman with auburn hair who kneeled down next to me.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“I think—ah!”

I had tried to stand up, but fire lanced through my left foot as soon as I had moved it. I reached to grab it, but the woman stopped me.

“Wait, I’m a forensic anthropologist, I’ll look at it,” she told me.

The woman’s fingers were firm but quick, causing the pain to flare up but she finished her examination quickly.

“You have a compound fracture,” she told me. “You’ll need x-rays and a cast.”

“Great,” I muttered.

“Bones! We lost him!”

The federal agents had come back, a tall brown haired man in the lead. When he saw us on the floor, he knelt down to join us.

“He’s probably gone back to get rid of the body,” Bones—the woman I assumed—said to him. She glanced back at me, her gaze penetrating. “Booth, she’s covered in evidence. Particulates from the burial site have transferred onto her and her clothes when he knocked her down.”

Maybe another eighteen year old girl would have been confused, but I had caught on quickly enough to understand what was going on. Whoever had bumped me was obviously some killer the FBI was tracking, explaining why he had run and caused the mob scene. Because he had made full-body contact with me, the FBI guy and his anthropologist partner wanted to collect any evidence that was now on me.

“Rachel!”

Natasha had made her way through the gawking people and reached my side. “Oh my God, are you okay?”

“Broken ankle,” I answered with gritted teeth.

The woman ignored Natasha and kept talking to the agent. “We need to bring her back to the lab.”

The man frowned but shrugged. “All right, Bones.”

“Who the hell are you?” Natasha demanded. She hadn’t caught on to what was going on.

“Special Agent Seeley Booth,” the agent said, standing up to loom over my friend. “This is my partner, Dr. Temperance Brennan of the Jeffersonian.” 

Natasha almost backed down, but then she flared up again. “Well, I’m taking Rachel to the hospital, so you can just wait for whatever else you want from her.”

“We have the facilities to take care of her,” Dr. Brennan argued. “And we need to get this evidence collected and analyzed as soon as possible to catch our suspect.” 

“Tasha, it’s okay,” I said quietly before she could keep arguing with the FBI. I very carefully dug out my cell phone from my pocket. “I’ll have to call my guardian,” I explained to Agent Booth.

Natasha took it out of my hand. “I’ll call him.”

“Okay, tell him that we’ll be at the Medico-legal lab at the Jeffersonian Institute,” Agent Booth said.

“I’ll meet you there,” Natasha promised me, walking away and punching in my speed dial for Hotch as she did.

“Tell him to bring me a change of clothes!” I called after her.

“Okay, let’s go.”

Booth looked down at me, perhaps noticing for the first time that I was still on the floor and wincing in pain. “How bad?” he asked his partner.

“She shouldn’t be walking,” Dr. Brennan answered promptly.

“Okay, I’ll call for a stretcher.”

“Oh God, please,” I protested in mortification. “Just give me a hand and I’ll hop.”

“No, hopping on one foot will place unnecessary strain on your spine and joints,” Dr. Brennan argued.

Even so, Agent Booth obligingly held down his hand for me to grab. But even after I struggled to stand on my good foot, I was teetering and feeling even more pain. I gritted my teeth, determined to make it anyway.

“Wow, Bones, a girl more stubborn than you are,” Agent Booth commented before he swiftly swung me up into his arms and carried me bridal style out of the club and to a waiting black SUV.

“You tell anyone else you carried me and gun or no gun, I will kill you,” I said quietly.

Of course, Booth laughed.

By the time I was ready to scream with the throbbing pain of my ankle, we had pulled up to the Jeffersonian, granted a part I had never been to before. My knight in FBI Kevlar must have called ahead because there was an EMT waiting with a wheelchair. I got wheeled inside and brought to a large atrium where a large, well-lit platform reigned supreme. Once inside, the EMT lifted me onto a table on the platform and began the painful process of removing my boot.

The EMT was done by the time Dr. Brennan, Agent Booth, a man, and two other women arrived on the platform.

“That’s all I can do for now,” the EMT told me. He had used the portable machine on the platform for the x-rays and fitted me with a walking cast. “You’ll want to go in to an orthopedist for a plaster cast.”

And then, the lab coats descended.

“Not often we get a live one in here,” the man commented as he approached me with a tray full of implements and glass dishes.

One of the women provided the introductions. 

“Rachel, my name is Dr. Camille Saroyan, this is Dr. Hodgins, and Angela Montenagro,” Saroyan said. “I know this might all seem intimidating but we’ll only be gathering evidence on the surface, it won’t hurt at all.”

The scientists then descended with tape lifts and tweezers, going through my clothes and my hair for the evidence they needed. I was nothing more than a breathing vehicle for their science. 

“Bone fragments here Dr. Brennan,” Hodgins announced. “And it looks like blood transfer on her clothes.”

While the scientists continued to talk around me as they gathered their evidence, I looked down and noticed the stains on my clothes for the first time. I expected to feel a little freaked out given the other times in my life I’d been covered in blood, but I actually didn’t feel much of anything besides exhaustion and annoyance. I wanted to be home, in my bed, with my cat, not sitting like an exhibit on a lab table being pecked and prodded.

I was tired, still hurting, essentially being ignored, and I was sick of it.

“Can someone tell me if my guardian has arrived yet?” I demanded shortly. “Because I’m not giving you my clothes until he gets here with more.”

The scientists stopped and stared at me and I saw Saroyan, Hodgins, and Angela exchange glances.

“Sorry, honey,” Angela apologized. “We aren’t used to having someone able to talk back on this table. We didn’t mean to ignore you.”

I shrugged and accepted the apology. “Still waiting on clothes.”

“We have some scrubs somewhere,” Dr. Saroyan offered. “I understand that you want to get rid of the clothing.”

I shrugged again. “Not the first time I’ve had blood on my clothing,” I muttered absently.

“Rachel, I notice that you didn’t say anything about parents, just a guardian,” Angela commented, apparently now engaging me in conversation to make up for earlier. Of course, it wasn’t exactly my favorite subject.

“Yeah,” I answered quickly. “I lost both my parents over a year ago.”

I was well aware that if I phrased it the way I did, people would assume that both of my parents were dead. But I had found out in the last year just how much I hated admitting that my father had walked out on me to strangers. Besides, it was effectively the truth, even if misleading, not to mention a lot simpler to explain.

“Oh God, I’m so sorry,” Angela said, sounding like she meant it. “So, are you in the foster system then?”

I shook my head. “No. One of my dad’s co-workers became my legal guardian.”

Right on cue, I saw Hotch walk through the sliding glass doors of the lab, dressed in his usual suit and wearing a stern expression.

“He’s right there, actually,” I pointed out since everyone was facing away from the entrance.

And then because my night was just destined for excitement, I saw Agent Booth actually recognize Hotch. 

“Hotchner, what are you doing here? BAU wasn’t called in.”

“I _was_ called in,” Hotch answered, waiting at the bottom of the platform stairs to be swiped in. “I am Rachel Gideon’s legal guardian.”

Booth froze in his steps for a second and then swung around to look at me again. “Wait, Gideon? Rachel Gideon as in--?”

Feeling caught out for lack of a better phrase, I interrupted. “As in Jason Gideon’s daughter, yeah, that’s me,” I said wearily.

It wasn’t like I was surprised that Booth and Hotch knew each other. Quantico and DC aren’t very far apart after all. But I had been hoping to avoid this kind of reaction. And I especially was hoping that Booth hadn’t heard of my father, but Dad was somewhat of a legend in the FBI, especially on the east coast.

“But Gideon isn’t dead,” Booth protested. “Is he?”

Hotch looked over at me and raised a single eyebrow. 

“I told them I lost my parents over a year ago,” I explained. “It’s not like I was lying.” Then I turned to the Jeffersonian crew. “My mom was murdered and my dad left me a few months later, okay? I’ve been living with Hotch for the past year.”

“Right,” Hotch interjected. “Now would someone like to explain to me what is going on here?”

Booth summarized the night’s events and explained why I had been brought in for evidence collection. But I recognized Hotch’s sharp glance at me—and my bandaged ankle—when Booth told him about my injury and calling in the EMT to meet us here. No doubt, Booth thought nothing wrong with that reasoning, but he was about to find out differently.

“Let me understand this correctly,” Hotch started, sounding calm, but demanding attention and answers. “You knew at the scene that Rachel had a compound fracture and instead of taking her to a hospital to be examined and taken care of, you decided your evidence was more important than her well being.”

I could tell that Booth really wanted to support his actions but had caught on to Hotch’s tone of voice that basically told him there was no excuse. The other scientists had all stepped away from me and stood waiting and watching the drama. All except Dr. Brennan who either hadn’t caught Hotch’s tone or didn’t care. 

“The EMT performed the x-rays here at the lab and immobilized the joint until Rachel can be taken in to an orthopedist,” Dr. Brennan explained calmly.

Booth did jump in then to back up his partner. “Yeah, Hotchner, this is about the Jory Clements case, we really need to get this evidence processed and catch the guy before he gets rid of the other bodies.”

“Four girls murdered and dumped in landfills over the past year, I’m familiar with the case,” Hotch said. “The main suspect is Sean MacDonald who finds his victims from the club scene, flirts with them, and brings them to a secondary location where he rapes and strangles them over the course of five days before he kills them.”

“Um, should he be talking about that in front of her?” Angela asked quietly. Neither of the FBI agents heard her.

“You have no idea what I’m used to overhearing,” I told her just as quietly.

Hotch looked over at the group and raised his eyebrows, silently pointing out the scientists who were just standing there and weren’t processing this critical evidence.

“Right people, let’s get to work,” Dr. Saroyan ordered, clapping her hands in effect.

“We still need her clothes,” Dr. Brennan pointed out.

Hotch held up the bag in his hand, probably containing a new set of clothing for me.

“I’ll help her,” Angela offered, but she didn’t move until Hotch nodded permission. 

With the temporary cast from the EMT, I could walk with Angela’s assistance, thank God. As I walked past Hotch, he reached out and wrapped his hand around my neck and squeezed before letting go. It was the only affection he would show me in public when he was in agent mode. And even though he wasn’t here as an FBI agent, he was confronting another federal officer.

Dr. Brennan followed us and did the actual collecting after we reached what must have been her office. Since they were allowing me to keep my underwear and bra, and we were all female, I didn’t feel self-conscious stripping off my stained clothing for Dr. Brennan. She left with the large paper bags to hand over to Dr. Hodgins, leaving me with Angela.

Luckily, Hotch had brought me my most comfortable pair of jeans and a soft and oversized sweater. The pants were more than wide enough to fit over the temporary bandage on my foot.

“So, that Agent Hotchner is really intense,” Angela commented.

“He’s protective,” I specified.

I was dressed, but I wasn’t feeling ready to go back out to the platform yet.

“Do you think I could just sit here for a minute?” I asked.

Angela smiled in sympathy. “Sure. Do you want me to sit with you?”

“Sure,” I repeated back.

Dr. Brennan had a very comfortable couch. Angela and I sat in silence for a minute before she spoke again.

“You know, we were almost thinking that you were abused for a second there,” she said. When I shot her a questioning look, she went on, “That comment you made about blood on your clothes and we were thinking you were in foster care. It’s not uncommon.”

“Which is why I’m thankful every day for Hotch,” I said with feeling.

“I can see that,” Angela told me. “He cares about you a great deal.”

I gave her a sharp look. Angela was the only person who hadn’t been introduced with a title and she had been the only one who hadn’t collected the physical evidence off of me. But there was a look in her eyes, sharp and piercing, that reminded me of Hotch or Reid or Emily when they were reading me.

“You’re not a profiler, are you?” I asked.

To my surprise, the woman laughed and her expression and eyes lightened in a way I had never seen in any of the profilers I knew. 

“Me? No way. I’m an artist. But I’ve been around and I can usually get a good read on people,” Angela explained to me. “Besides, that bond that I saw between you and Agent Hotchner? That’s beyond easy to tell.”

Given that Hotch was protective of his people to begin with, extremely protective of me, and add to that the fact that I was once again involved in a serial killer case and got injured? I was actually surprised he didn’t call in the rest of the team and ordered Morgan to sweep me up and carry me off to a tower, lock the door, and throw away the key. I was probably headed that direction tonight as soon as Hotch got me home.

Angela peered around through the glass door and smirked at me. “I think we’d better get out there. Looks like your FBI agent is about to glare holes into _our_ FBI agent.”

I grinned in reply and gratefully accepted Angela’s hand to stand up. The EMT had given me a dose of pain pills before he had left, but I was still hurting. I hobbled out of Dr. Brennan’s office and immediately saw Hotch and Booth standing just by the platform stairs, talking in low tones. It wasn’t until I was about six feet away that I heard what they were saying.

“All I’m saying is that if this were your case, you would have done the same thing,” Booth was arguing.

“Are you trying to tell me that your scientists couldn’t have gone to the hospital to collect the evidence there?” Hotch demanded. He was using his tone of quiet and focused anger. Hotch yelling was scary, Hotch quiet and in your face was terrifying.

“They collect it here, they process it here, they give me results faster,” Booth shot back. “You know that right now MacDonald is on his way to his hiding spot, planning to get rid of his most recent victim and I’ve _got_ to catch him in that act before he blows town and heads to New York or Boston or Chicago.”

“Enough,” I interrupted. “Agent Booth, go catch your killer. Hotch, please take me home.”

“We’re going to the hospital,” Hotch told me.

“My foot is immobilized, it is now”—I checked my watch—“almost two in the morning, I am tired, I want a shower, and I want sleep. We can go get a permanent cast when I wake up in the morning.”

Hotch stared me down for a minute, but I was telling the absolute truth. Now that the Jeffersonian crew had gotten their evidence, I wanted nothing more than to clean myself up and go to bed.

“All right, let’s go home,” he conceded. He turned once again to the other federal agent. “Booth,” he said shortly, a dismissal and a warning in just the agent’s name. Having been on the receiving end of that tone on occasion, where Hotch crams in volumes of meaning into less than a handful of words, I could sympathize.

Hotch gave one final curt nod and then wrapped his hand around my elbow to escort and support me out. Once we were past the sliding glass doors, his arm came around my waist to support me further as we made our way to his SUV.

“Are you sure about waiting until tomorrow for the cast?” Hotch asked after he helped boost me up into my seat.

“Yeah,” I said immediately. “Really, I just want to take some more pain pills, wash my face, and go to sleep.”

I actually ended up drifting off as Hotch drove us home and stumbled up to the apartment still half-asleep with Hotch’s help again. He supported me all the way to my room and eased me down onto my bed since by then, I really had no energy left to control my descent.

“Will you let me know when they catch the killer?” I asked before Hotch could leave. When he simply looked at me, I added, “Booth _is_ going to call you as soon as they do and I just want to know that my suffering caught a bad guy.”

“What makes you think he’s going to call me?” Hotch asked. “It’s not a BAU case.”

I rolled my eyes, annoyed but not surprised that Hotch was playing his usual evasion card with me.

“He’ll want to assure you that his decisions paid off in the end so that you won’t go after him for endangering me,” I explained. “And then you’ll both do that manly thing where neither of you will admit you were wrong but you do acknowledge that the other was right.”

My reward was a brief half-smile from Hotch before he reached out, grabbed a blanket and draped it over me, and then leaned down to kiss my forehead.

Hotch never needs words to tell me when I’m right.


	7. Reprise

_Related episode: 4.15 Zoe’s Reprise_

_Reprise - a repeated passage of music_

It wasn’t easy to balance a stack of twenty books in my arms while also walking around in a bulky cast, but somehow, I was managing it. And since I was forbidden from stocking the shelves on the ladder due to my infirm state, I was left with moving books from the back stock room to the front, getting set up for the book reading scheduled for later in the day.

In my hands, each book was glossy-new, a special addition printing of _Deviance_ by Special Agent David Rossi for its tenth anniversary. When I had heard about his book tour last month, I had set up a meet between Rossi and my boss at Monarch Books, Colin Morris to add the store to the tour schedule. We were the last date for the two week long tour which Rossi had done for his annual leave this year.

Of course, a week ago, he had almost canceled the tour. I heard that from JJ when she, Garcia, and Emily had arrived for our semi-weekly coffee get together a couple of days ago. I had known about the case the team had gone on a couple of days before that. Hotch had later told me about the burgeoning serial killer who had studied criminology as a way of teaching himself how to be a serial killer. I guess there is no limit as to the kinds of things that are self-taught nowadays.

But it was JJ who confided in us that in light of this guy studying his books and the fact that one of the victims had been a girl around my age who had also been studying criminology that tempted Rossi to cancel his tour. Apparently the girl had been at one of his book readings and had been investigating the surge of murders going on and she had been killed for it.

JJ must have talked him out of canceling the tour though since he had come back with the team and double checked the details for tonight. Or maybe he just knew that I would do something harsh if he backed out. For a man who’s been divorced three times, Rossi has a healthy respect for a pissed off female.

“Rachel, put those down before you fall and break your other leg!”

Isobel McMahon, or Izzy, rushed over to me and took the stack of books out of my arms. Izzy was Colin’s second in charge at the store, a tall woman with masses of curly red hair who looked more like an Irish Amazon than a book store manager.

“It was only my ankle and I’m in no danger of breaking anything else,” I retorted, but I relinquished my paper bounty without fuss. “Is there _anything_ that you’ll let me do to help set up for tonight?”

Izzy stared me down, no doubt trying to actually think of something that didn’t involve any physicality. Reactions to my broken ankle had been diverse among my various circles of people. Hotch, Reid, and Garcia, of course, were the most upset and protective. The whole team was actually, to be perfectly honest, just to different degrees. And then Reid had gone and spilled the whole story to Colin who had shared it with his mother, daughter, and with Izzy and all of them also turned into nurse maids who wouldn’t let me do anything for myself if they could do it for me.

It was really starting to get on my nerves.

“Go to the back and get some order forms in case we need to order more books,” Izzy finally said. “Then take over the register for Colin so I can order him about with chairs.”

“Yes ma’am,” I saluted with a smirk and turned on my heels.

I had just returned to the back room and had grabbed a folder of order forms when I heard my name being called from the front part of the store. I limped back out to the front area and saw that there was a man standing at the counter, his back to me, talking with Colin. There was an expression I had never seen before on Colin’s face, making me nervous.

“Colin?” I asked when I was a few feet away.

Before my employer could announce the visitor, he turned around. To my utter surprise, I recognized my brother John from San Francisco.

“John,” I managed to say after a moment of shocked silence.

“Rachel, it’s good to see you.”

He was smiling at me, but it was easy to see he was hesitant about closing the distance between us. Since I wasn’t really sure I wanted to put on a show of sibling love in front of Colin, I didn’t mind. Speaking of…

“Colin, this is my brother John Jacobs. John, my boss Colin Morris, he owns the book store,” I introduced.

Colin still had that strange expression on his face but he smoothed it over when John turned back to face him and shake his hand. Once the two men got done with the superficial greetings, John turned back to me.

“Your agent Hotchner told me where I could find you. I was wondering if you wanted to catch an early dinner. I understand you have an event here later tonight?”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Agent Rossi is having a book reading and signing tonight.” I looked at Colin and thought of an excuse. “I really should stay here and help—“

“Nonsense,” Colin interrupted. “You know Izzy won’t let you do anything since you’re practically half lame. Just double check the catering order with my daughter on your way back and that will be help enough.”

With John looking at me, I couldn’t glare at my boss for puncturing my excuse. Neatly outmaneuvered, I sighed. “All right. Dinner sounds nice.”

“I’ll go pull my car up to the front, all right?” John asked me.

Before I could protest and explain that we could just eat at the Crown Café next door, Colin nodded and waved John off. Once my brother was gone, Colin looked at me.

“My mother is working this afternoon and she knows about your brother refusing to take you in last year. She will not be pleased to meet him or restrained in her reaction.”

My eyebrows shot up into my hairline, but I wasn’t actually all that surprised. One night, I had just about poured out my life story to Natasha and since I hadn’t sworn her to secrecy, it seemed that she had also shared some of the story with her grandmother. 

“You are one of her precious _liebchens_ and she will never understand or forgive your brother.”

“Even though if I had actually gone with my brother last year, she never would have known me?” I asked.

“Even so,” Colin confirmed.

I shrugged it off; there was nothing to be gained by trying to work out the intricacies of Matilda Morris’ inner workings. She was a tough old bird who never shied away from telling you exactly what was on her mind. I had no trouble believing Colin when he told me that Matilda would most likely make a scene chewing John out.

“I’ll try to be back in an hour then,” I said.

“Take your time,” Colin offered. “I doubt your brother dropped in for a visit from the other end of the country just for a quick chat.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I muttered.

I grabbed my jacket by the front door on my way out where I saw my brother pull up, driving the green Suburban that had once been our mother’s. I smoothed my face over as I climbed into the front passenger seat, but I couldn’t deny that I felt like I had been sucker-punched.

“Down the street, turn left at the stop sign,” I instructed. “Take the highway north, right at the second exit, and then right again.”

Over the year that I’d been working at Monarch, the Crown had really become my go to place. With that not an option, luckily I had another fall back place to go. When John pulled into the parking lot of the Full Moon diner, he smiled.

“This was one of Mom’s favorite places,” he commented.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

What John didn’t know was that my dad had taken Mom here in the first place. Dad has liked going to old time diners since he was a kid, so when he and Mom were dating in college he had gotten her going along with him. Considering both a doctor’s and a federal agent’s work hours was nicely accommodated by a 24-hour open diner, it’s not much of a mystery why both of them continued their patronage. Even all those years later after I was born and after we had moved to Quantico, it was still the type of place that they both liked. 

Considering it was only four o’clock in the afternoon, we were seated right away. John waited until we ordered before he spoke.

“So, still vegetarian?” he asked.

I had ordered minestrone soup and a Caesar salad without chicken. There would be food at the book signing so I didn’t want to eat a heavy dinner.

“Yeah,” I answered. “Still vegetarian.” Looking to change the subject, I seized on the first thing on my mind. “How are Kat and the babies?”

I had received the birth announcement when their twin daughters had been born back in March, around the same time that Hotch and Haley had finalized their divorce and I had gone to Chicago with the band and orchestra on spring break.

“Settling into the hotel room, actually,” John answered.

I looked up in surprise. You didn’t just pack up your wife and infant twins for a cross-country trip out of the blue without a damn good reason. “Is something going on?”

John sighed and I really took the time to study him as he drank down half of his coffee. Considering the thirteen year age difference and then living on opposite coasts, I had never really known much about my oldest brother, but I still knew him better than Scott who had deliberately avoided me whenever possible and Stephen, my dad’s son whom I’d never met before.

John was tense and on edge, more than I would expect being a new father. I didn’t need my growing profiler skills to suspect that John was almost as uncomfortable talking with me as I was with him. I just had a lot more recent experience and practice at pretending everything was normal.

“Look, Rachel…” John started. “I know that I don’t deserve any forgiveness or good will from you considering what happened last year. I can’t tell you how much I regretted leaving you here and please believe me that Kat and I talked for hours, trying to figure out how to make it work. And we just couldn’t do it, however much we hated to admit it.”

“What did you think would happen to me?” I asked. It was really my biggest question that I had never understood over the past year. “I mean, you had to know Scott wouldn’t take me in and Alan couldn’t. Did you think I would be better off in foster care than on your couch? Your floor even?”

It’s true that I wouldn’t have been happy, moving back to California to start fresh at a new high school. And considering that Hotch had given me a home, I really felt like I was better off the way things had turned out retrospectively. But John couldn’t have known that it would happen and I found myself remembering my feelings of abandonment all too easily.

“I know, I know,” John said, bringing a hand up to rub at his temple. “Please believe me, I’ve been kicking myself for over a year. And the more I thought of it, the more I hated myself. When the girls were born, it got worse. I’ve been asking myself, if anything happened to me and Kat, what would I want to have happen to them? Mostly though, I just know that Mom would be so ashamed of me.”

The waitress arrived with our order, topped off John’s coffee and refilled my Coke before leaving us alone again. Before either of us took a bite, I shook my head.

“So, are you here for closure or something? It’s fine, I’m fine, stop feeling guilty because it all turned out all right.”

“No, that’s not why I came,” John protested. “I wanted to tell you how sorry I am and that I want to make it up to you.”

I paused, bringing the first spoonful of soup up to my mouth. “Make it up to me, how?”

“Well, obviously, I would like to say that you have a home with me and Kat now. She and her sister have decided that her father is better off in a nursing home with full-time care. Also, I got a raise at work so we’re looking for a larger house now that we can afford it.”

“John, I can’t just pick up and change schools with just a semester left before I graduate,” I said incredulously. 

“I know that,” he said patiently. “But I was thinking that if you were looking at colleges out in California, you could stay with us during breaks or come for a weekend or something.”

I had an acceptance letter to Chapman University in my room. It wasn’t in the San Francisco neighborhood, but it wouldn’t be completely unreasonable to drive up for breaks like John was offering.

“I um, I don’t know what to say,” I said to stall for time.

“Just think about it,” John told me. “I want to do the right thing here, like I should have done last time.”

While we ate our food, I gave John’s offer serious thought. There were a lot of factors on my mind for picking my higher education institution and John couldn’t have known that he had just made my choice more complicated. I didn’t hate my brother and while I was still feeling resentful, I didn’t hate him for what he did. Really, I was happy with how things had worked out in the end. At least, as happy as I could be considering my mom had been murdered and my dad had pretty much had a mental break down and ran off on me. 

“I haven’t decided where I’m going yet,” I finally said. “I’ve…got a lot to think about.”

“I remember what that was like,” John assured me. “I’m guessing you’re going to study music?”

I smiled. No matter how little we knew each other, John knew me enough to guess my intended major.

Eventually, John brought out pictures of my nieces, Laura and Lillian, for me to admire. I was on Kat’s email list, so I had been updated with their particulars since they were born last spring.

“They’re beautiful,” I said.

“I keep thinking how Mom is missing this,” John admitted quietly.

“Yeah,” I agreed just as softly.

Maybe part of why I was having trouble deciding on a college was that I kept missing the two most important opinions: Mom’s and Dad’s. Sure, Mom would probably just be telling me to go with my heart and that she would support my decision, but I was certain that Dad would have opinions on everything detail. Even if I wouldn’t always agree with him, I would listen.

But there wasn’t going to be any parental advice for me about my college choice. For the most part, Hotch was letting me make my own decision, Reid promised to help me no matter where I went, and Garcia was at the ready to scope out my final choice with a magnifying glass and a fine-toothed comb.

“So, have you heard from your dad?” John asked when he was about half way through his meatloaf and mashed potatoes.

I took the time to chew my mouthful of food thoroughly in order to think about my response.

“He’s sent me gifts for Christmas and my birthday,” I said. “None of them came with a card, but I know they’re from him. But no, I haven’t really heard from him.”

“I’m so sorry, Rachel.”

I shrugged. “I’ve gotten used to it.”

John wasn’t a profiler to see through my façade. Since it was mostly true, only someone like Michael, Hotch, or Reid could have spotted my hidden pain anyway.

When I was running out of time, John drove me back to Monarch and promised to call me again tomorrow so that we could meet for breakfast with Kat and the twins before they flew back home the day after.

Before I walked in, I ducked inside the next door Crown Café where I found my friend and Colin’s daughter Natasha stacking covered trays full of food. 

“If you think that I’m going to let you carry anything next door or if my father is expecting it, you’re both crazy,” Natasha said without looking up at me.

“You know, it wasn’t my arms that were broken,” I pointed out grouchily. “I am perfectly capable of helping to carry something.”

“Not on my watch.”

Natasha would be joining us for the evening and was dressed in a white, cable-knit sweater dress that came down to her knees with a black belt and black stockings and her hair pinned up in a spiky bun that showed off her blue and purple streaks. I was wearing one of my typical work outfits: a long purple skirt, a white tee shirt, and a black cardigan. 

“Fine,” I gave in. “Is everything almost ready?”

“Yeah, I’m just waiting for Jake to get here with his muscles,” Natasha told me. “Tell Dad we’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.”

“Got it.”

Back at the bookstore, Izzy and Colin had already set up small podium and table for Rossi and the two dozen chairs for the fans. Colin hadn’t changed clothes, but Izzy had opted for a brown pant suit instead of her usual jeans.

Also, Rossi had arrived with his publicist to go over the final details and arrangements for the evening. I had always wondered if agents like my dad and Rossi had spent so many years wearing suits to work that once they reached a certain number of years, they had had their fill. Granted, Rossi’s dark-washed denim trousers, button-down shirt, and suit jacket were definitely several cuts above the jeans and plaid shirts Dad had worn.

“Hotch has already told me that you are not supposed to buy my book,” Rossi said to me in greeting.

“I’m sure it’s wonderfully written, but I have enough fodder for disturbing dreams as it is,” I replied honestly.

Rossi would never be a father figure for me, or even a teacher. Hotch was my guardian, Reid my “brother,” and my orchestra director at school was my favorite teacher. Still, Rossi was closest to an uncle, the type that always told me the truth, no matter how harsh. In fact, that honesty ran both ways between us since I didn’t spare him any of my opinions the same way that I did with Hotch and Reid sometimes just because I didn’t want to add to their stress.

“Me, too, kiddo.”

I smiled at him, half abashed. I might come close to winning out over Rossi for personal tragedy, but he had decades of those types of experiences in his career. 

By seven o’clock, all two dozen chairs were full with almost twice that number standing around. Some of those people included the entire BAU team. Hotch had arrived when I was busy so we didn’t get a chance to speak until after Rossi’s reading, the question and answer portion, as well as the social mingling afterward. Per Izzy’s instructions and gimlet eye glare, I was steadily perched on a stool behind the counter, manning the cashier. Monarch saw some good business that night and not just Rossi’s book. I think people were already buying some Christmas gifts.

About three hours later, the crowd was thinning finally, and Hotch made his way over to the counter. 

“Are you all right?” he asked me quietly.

“Are you asking about my foot or my surprise out-of-town visitor?” I riposted just as quietly.

Hotch just gave me a look, but I had already known what he meant.

“We talked,” I admitted. “And it’s fine. Now, do you want to tell me why you didn’t warn me John was in town or that you told him where to find me?”

“He came into my office today and asked my permission to talk to you,” Hotch explained. “I was…shocked. I hadn’t thought to hear from your brother again, let alone see him. And then to have him defer to me for something as simple as talking to you…when he asked I thought that he deserved the chance. So I didn’t tell you that he was on his way because I didn’t want you to hide yourself away.”

I ducked my head so Hotch couldn’t read my expression. But that act itself pretty much told him anyway that he was right. If I had known that John was coming to talk with me, I likely would have disappeared and Colin probably would have helped me.

“He told me that if I chose a school in California, I would have a home with him and Kat for school breaks and weekends,” I told Hotch.

“You have a school on the west coast that accepted you,” Hotch said, as if I needed reminding.

“Yeah, I do,” I confirmed. “But I still can’t decide and while I know John didn’t mean to make this more complicated, he did.”

“It’s an extremely important decision,” Hotch said noncommittally. 

As if I needed reminding. 

“Almost ready to go home?” Hotch asked.

“I’ll check with Colin. If Izzy won’t let me help clean up, then yeah, I’m ready.”

Turns out, Izzy refused to let me clean up just as she had refused to let me help set up, just as I figured. Since Hotch had dropped me off at work today—he didn’t want me driving much, despite the fact that it was my left ankle that had been broken, not my right—he walked me back to his car and drove us home. 

The next day, I met John, Kat, and the twins for breakfast at the same diner. Over coffee, omelets, hash browns, and pancakes, we talked more about college and parenthood. I held each of my nieces in my arms; Laura eventually fell asleep as I was holding her.

“Promise me that you’ll come visit us in the summer,” Kat demanded. “I want my girls to know both of their aunts.”

“I’ll see what I can work out,” I promised.

Later that day, I met Hotch and Jack at home and went with them to the kid’s craft section at the museum. Hotch and I looked on as Jack played with bubbles, molding clay, and finger paint. Much as we both tried, neither of us could avoid participating or getting spots on our clothes despite the plastic aprons. But all of us were smiling.

We returned home, cleaned ourselves up as best we could, and handed a cleaned Jack off to Haley. I was showering myself that night and realized what I wanted to do. John and Kat were my family, and I would be happy to see them and visit whenever I could. But my home was here. Hotch, Jack, Reid, and Garcia were my family. Why would I go anywhere else?


	8. Simple Gifts

_Related episode: 4.16 Pleasure is My Business_

_Simple Gifts - a traditional Shaker tune/hymn_

_'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,  
Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,  
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,  
'Twill be in the valley of love and  
Delight. When true simplicity is gain'd,  
To bow and to bend we will not be asham'd,  
To turn, turn will be our delight,  
Till by turning, turning we come round right._

“Rachel? Are you almost ready?”

“Just about!” I shouted over my shoulder in response to Hotch’s question. I was standing in my bathroom in front of the mirror, putting the final touches on my make up and hair.

It was Thanksgiving and we were getting ready to go to the Morrises for dinner. The way Natasha explained it under the cool eyes of her grandmother, she still felt guilty for bringing me along to the club that eventful night which resulted in my injury and still-infirm state. I got the impression that it was actually Matilda who felt badly for me and had been looking for an excuse to coddle me anyway. Oh well, I wasn’t going to turn down the invitation and dutifully passed it along to Hotch who also accepted. Apparently, Haley was taking Jack with her to a family gathering, but Hotch would have time with his son tomorrow while Haley and Jessica did some Black Friday shopping.

Natasha had also told me that Reid had been invited as well and that I should invite Michael. Matilda had once overheard me mention that Michael had never had an actual Thanksgiving meal before in his life due to his absent mother and sorry excuse of a father. Matilda seemed determined to have a table full of strays this year for dinner though Reid had been invited and attended before seeing as he was close friends with Colin.

It had only been a month since I had been slammed to the dance floor by a murder suspect fleeing the FBI agents sent to arrest him. My broken ankle was at least a clean break and had been set and secured with a sturdy walking cast which meant I didn’t need crutches. Truthfully, the hardest part for me was the fact that I was injured for the first time since my mother had died, meaning it was the first time I had gone in to a doctor without my own doctor mother with me.

The second hardest thing to deal with was clothing. I didn’t have many pairs of pants that could fit over the cast, not even to slip them on and then roll up the left leg. That left me with skirts and dresses, but given that it was November, it was getting chilly. So every day I put on leggings before strapping on the cast just as I had done today to keep my legs warm.

For school, I would have just chosen a denim skirt and basic shirt, but as today was a holiday and we were going to Colin’s house, I chose to wear a dusky pink jersey cotton dress with a round neck and long tight sleeves. I thought it was especially appropriate since Natasha had helped me pick it out. For jewelry, I chose plain gold hoop earrings, as well as the pink cameo necklace and opal ring I had from my mother. My hair I braided into two plaits and then wrapped around my head and pinned into place; my make up I kept to my usual minimum with dark brown eyeliner, lighter brown eye shadow, a hint of blush, and pink lip gloss.

Finally, after a quick spritz of pear-berry body spray, I called myself ready to go and limped out of the bathroom to meet Hotch in the living room. I knew my work was worth it by the look on my guardian’s face when he saw me. It wasn’t all that often I put this much effort into my appearance and Hotch certainly hadn’t been around when I used to go to school dances.

“Don’t you look elegant,” he commented with a smile.

I rolled my eyes. “Only when I’m not in motion,” I quipped. I looked him over and smiled back at him. “You should think about dressing like that at the office.”

I saw Hotch in suits practically every day and the man always looked sharp and professional. Today, he wore a charcoal gray suit with a dark red buttoned shirt, but no tie and he had left the top two buttons undone. The effect was subtle, but startling.

“Don’t tell me you’re in on the betting pool too,” Hotch complained.

I couldn’t help but laugh; I hadn’t known there was a betting pool at the office for the day Hotch showed up for work without a tie, but it didn’t surprise me that it existed. A common practice at any FBI office, let alone the BAU, was to find levity wherever and whenever you could.

Michael showed up right on time to car pool with us to the Morris house. My best friend had combed his long blond hair into order and had come dressed in what were probably his best clothes: the black pants he also wore for band and orchestra concerts and a blue V-neck sweater with black tee shirt underneath.

“I’m certainly thankful for two such handsome escorts,” I said, half in jest and half sincerely.

“Had to dress to match you,” Michael teased me. “Can’t have you looking so good on your own and be ashamed to be seen with me in my greasy coveralls.”

I laughed and Hotch grinned as we made our way out of the apartment and down to Hotch’s car in the garage. Michel very courteously helped me up into the back seat of the SUV and then sat in front of me in the shotgun position. Meanwhile, Hotch placed the salad I had made and the wine he had bought next to me on the bench seat before slipping into the driver’s seat and starting the car.

Colin lived the same colonial style house he had shared with his late wife and where Natasha had grown up. When Natasha’s mother had passed away, Matilda had moved in. Natasha had her own apartment now, but Colin and Matilda still lived in the house together.

“Come, come, sit down,” Matilda ordered us as we came in the door. Her white hair was permed to perfection and she was wearing black pants, a purple sweater and a flowered scarf around her neck.

Reid was already there when we arrived, wearing one of his typical outfits of dress pants, collared shirt, and a plaid vest. He and Hotch shook hands and then Reid took our dinner contributions off Hotch’s hands to take to the kitchen since he was more familiar with the house. Matilda bustled us into the living room and insisted I sit down. After she fussed over me, her attention turned to Michael, pronouncing him “too skinny” and immediately presenting us with the platters of appetizers she had made.

Natasha, a culinary school graduate, had first learned to cook from Matilda, so the food was excellent from the start with tomato and mozzarella ball skewers with basil dipping sauce and slices of sausage wrapped in puff pastry as well as bowls of nuts and olives.

Colin came out with drinks, dressed in his usual khaki pants, turtle neck shirt, and tweed jacket with patched elbows. He already had a glass of brandy for Reid and a bourbon drink for Hotch.

“And I suppose I am to wait on you hand and foot?” Colin asked me archly. His sense of humor was subtle and my boss liked to pretend he was a grouchy old man but I knew better.

So did his mother. She smacked his arm and glared at him. “Pretend I taught you manners, boy.” She turned to me. “You ask for whatever you like, _liebchen_.” 

I smirked at the exchange and leaned back into my seat with Michael right next to me. “Coke, please.”

Michael asked for the same when Colin asked. I watched him walk off toward the kitchen and heard him complain, “When is that bird going to be done? I’m starving and we have guests who would like to eat sometime in the next century.”

I gathered that Natasha was in the kitchen, working on the bulk of the meal.

“I’m sure that they don’t want food poisoning from undercooked turkey,” Natasha pointed out cheerfully in response to her father. “Just make yourself another drink and eat Grandma’s appetizers.”

I was still giggling when Natasha poked her head into the living to say hello. My best friend after Michael, she was dressed up in a dark red dress layered with black satin and black beads. To protect the dress while she cooked, she wore an apron picturing a cat and the words, “Om nom nom.”

With the door to the kitchen open, I could really smell the turkey cooking in all its glory. Natasha had already told me that it had been brining for forty eight hours in a concoction of water, soy sauce, brown sugar, cinnamon, peppercorns, red pepper flakes, and apple cider vinegar.

“Still another half hour on the turkey,” Natasha announced. “Then at least twenty minutes to rest. Then Dad will need to mash the potatoes so that the only lumps to complain about are his own fault and I’ll make the gravy and put in the dinner rolls.”

That done, Natasha sat down with us and we all passed around the food. The conversation covered a range of topics, from the success of Rossi’s book tour since one of his stops had been Monarch Books to the higher education plans of myself and Michael.

Natasha recruited Hotch and Michael to set the table as she and her father and grandmother put the finishing touches on dinner and then brought all the food out to the table. Only then was I allowed to stand up and move to the dining room since Matilda was convinced I should be off my feet as much as possible.

Colin sat at the head of the table and Matilda at the foot with Natasha and Reid down one side between them, leaving Hotch, Michael, and me to sit on the other side. There was hardly an inch of tablecloth showing, hidden underneath platters of food. The turkey reigned supreme in all its golden glory with enormous bowls of mashed potatoes and stuffing nearby. The homemade rolls were nestled in a basket next to the butter dish and Matilda had also made green bean casserole and roasted butternut squash. The salad I had made for the occasion was baby spinach with crumbled goat cheese, dried cherries, and slivered almonds with honey mustard dressing. Hotch poured wine for all the age appropriate adults and sparkling cider for Michael and me.

“Now, as this is a larger gathering than all of us are used to,” Colin said before we began eating. “Instead of going ‘round the table to say what we are each thankful for, if everyone would take the candle next to their place settings, think of their gratitude, and then light the candle and place it in the center of the table.”

I was somewhat relieved that Colin had thought of this. I had a feeling that if we had taken turns to say what we were thankful for, it could become a teary affair rather quickly. So I gratefully thought of this man that I worked for and how much I appreciated him and his mother for welcoming me so easily into their family. I was thankful for Natasha who was always ready to remind me to have fun and who listened to me and liked me for who I was, not who she wanted me to be.

I thought of Michael, seated on my left side and how he had never flinched from the drama or ugliness that was so frequently my life. There was Reid seated across from me and his endless intelligence and devotion and the shared pain he and I would always feel but also the shared knowledge that we still had each other.

I thanked God every day for Hotch at my right hand, my guardian and protector, who had stepped in to watch over me like a father without ever trying to take my father’s place. Hotch had his own place in my heart, now and forever. I reached under the table and found his hand. He readily held mine and squeezed gently. I lit my candle and placed it in a holder, saying a quick prayer for the other BAU team members who were also my family.

After that, a friendly chaos erupted as dishes and platters were passed around in a somewhat organized manner. I even had a small portion of turkey since it smelled so good and it did taste heavenly moist and tender.

About halfway through, I looked over at Michael to see how he was doing. Always on the more reticent side, Michael wasn’t exactly talkative around other people besides me, but he was answering direct questions and making some other comments into the larger conversation. He actually looked happy and I was reminded of how thankful I was that he was finally living on his own, away from his abusive and neglectful father. I wished that my mother could have known this side of Michael or that my father could have waited to see this. Neither of them had exactly approved of our friendship. 

Of course, much of the conversation was dominated by Natasha and Colin as they constantly bickered and teased each other. At first, I had noticed that Hotch and Michael were surprised by how they treated each other, but quickly, they both realized that this was just how that particular father/daughter relationship worked.

“You’re not thankful for me?” Natasha pouted. “I come over here and cook a fabulous Thanksgiving dinner and I don’t make it on your thankful list?”

“Cook me dinner every night and maybe you’ll rate the list next year,” Colin teased.

“Then you’re doomed for disappointment, Father.”

There was a shadow of a frown on Hotch’s face and I could guess what put it there. The team had just come back from a case in Texas a week ago.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “She’s not going to become an escort and start killing her clients to get back at her dad.”

Hotch’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, likely scandalized that I had brought up one of the team’s cases in front of mixed company.

“What’s this now?” Matilda asked.

Reid jumped in and summarized the case without getting too detailed for the dinner table and for people unaccustomed to hearing about FBI cases in the first place.

“Well, that certainly proves the point that all children know the best way to punish their parents,” Natasha commented once Reid was done.

“Eh? How’s that?” Colin demanded.

Natasha and I exchanged a quick glance. She had once told me that no matter how much her father loved her and was proud of her accomplishments, he had always been hoping that she would follow in _his_ footsteps rather than Matilda’s. Natasha was smart, but she just didn’t have the same love and reverence for the written word like he did, or Reid or me.

Instead of saying that, Natasha continued, “It’s really simple when you think about it. By a certain point, most children will figure out the absolute best way to punish or disappoint their parents. It’s just a question as to whether the kid will act on it.”

“Dare I ask how you would punish me?” Colin asked cautiously.

“Oh, there’s always the basics: flunk school, teenaged pregnancy, pursuing a life of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll,” Natasha listed off flippantly. “But if I had wanted to, I would have packed up and hit the road after high school to wander around the country. That rootless existence thing would drive you nuts.”

“It works in reverse, too,” Michael added. “I was always a disappointment to my father because I wasn’t a lazy, gambling, drunk like he was.” My friend frowned. “Then again, there wasn’t a lot that didn’t disappoint my father.”

“Your father deserves whatever disappointments life throws at him,” I said. I was actually surprised that Michael had shared that much in front of people he had just met.

“What about you, Rachel?” Hotch asked. “How would you punish your father?”

I would become the very thing he’s hunted all these years, I thought. And I would make other serial killers my victims as if to show Dad how to truly take care of serial killers for good. And I would definitely use all that I had learned about serial killers and profiling to make sure that I wasn’t caught. But that was definitely _not_ a confession to make in front of two FBI agents.

“I would convince Dave to make me the fourth Mrs. Rossi,” I answered with a smirk. “Can you just picture his face?”

Considering that Dad and Rossi had never liked each other, marrying him would probably send my dad through the roof and be entertaining as hell. And like I intended, my answer lightened the mood as we worked to clear off the table, package the leftovers, and clean up before dessert. I could hardly wait since Reid had baked pies.

There were probably a lot of people who would be surprised that Reid was actually a good cook. Mostly, it was people who forgot two very important facts. One, Reid had been taking care of himself and his mother since he was ten years old, including cooking duties. Second, one of his doctorates was chemistry and what was cooking and baking except chemistry with edible ingredients?

So we had homemade apple and pecan pies for dessert with coffee and chocolate candies that Michael had brought as his contribution. By the end of the night, I was warm, stuffed, and content. When we got ready to leave, Matilda produced two bags of leftovers, one for Michael and one for Hotch and me. We were hugged and kissed and then out the door.

It wasn’t until Hotch and I were home alone, both changed into pajamas and getting ready for bed that I made my confession.

“Speaking of disappointing parents,” I said cautiously. “I, um, lied earlier tonight.”

Hotch looked at me swiftly in that way that I always suspected he used to assess suspects.

“If you’re talking about how you would most likely turn into a serial killer to punish your father, I already suspected,” he said levelly.

I rolled my eyes. “Guilty, but not what I was talking about.”

“Then what?”

“When we were talking about colleges and I said I still wasn’t sure where I wanted to go, I lied. I do know, I’m just not sure you’re going to like the answer.”

Hotch glanced me over again and I knew he was cataloguing my facial expressions, the way I was picking at my nails, and how I couldn’t quite meet his eyes.

“Let me get us something to drink and we’ll talk,” he said.

I hobbled over to the couch and tucked my good leg underneath me as I sat down. Hotch came to join me with two steaming cups in his hands, more coffee for himself and chai tea for me.

“So, you _have_ made a decision?” Hotch asked to get me going.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about where to go,” I started. “I’ve been accepted just about everywhere I applied and I can go just about anywhere in the country. It seems like all the schools can offer me good programs and professors and I can get scholarships at all of them.”

“It’s been difficult for you to decide, I know,” Hotch said.

I drank my tea to help me gather my courage. “Every time I have thought about going away to college to Chicago or New York, I just…I get sick to my stomach.”

Hotch frowned. “You can’t be worried about college. You’re smart, independent, I’m sure that you’ll succeed no matter which institution you choose.”

I smiled at his confidence in me. “That’s not what has been making it hard to make a decision. I finally realized, it’s that I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to go away and be alone. Not again.”

And that was really the crux of the whole thing. I was certain that I could take advantage of any school program and I knew what I wanted to study and what I wanted to do with my life. It was the thought of leaving everyone I loved behind that had me in agony.

“So you’re worried about meeting new people?” Hotch asked in confusion. “That doesn’t seem like you.”

I shook my head. “Not exactly. Hotch, if I had wanted to get away from all of this, away from all of you, then I would have insisted on going to California with John last year or gotten my GED and gone to Africa with Alan. But the fact is, I don’t want to leave. You, Spencer, Michael, Penelope, you’re all my family. And I just can’t picture myself walking away from my family. It doesn’t matter that I would be home on break, that’s not enough.

“Last year, when Dad left and I got, well, troubled, I knew what it felt like to be alone. I know that it wasn’t true, but at the time, I really felt like I had no one else in the world and it was the worst I have ever felt in my life. And sure, I know that just because I’m going to college it’s not like I’ll be cut off forever but it won’t be the same if I go far away.”

I took in a deep breath and Hotch waited for me to go on patiently.

“So I’ve decided to go to Strader University. It’s less than an hour away so I’m still close, but I can live in the campus dorms so that you can redesign my room for Jack if you can ever get him for a night.”

“Rachel,” Hotch interrupted. “This is your decision, and if you’ve made it, I will support you. But I don’t understand why you think I would be disappointed.”

“Because…I’m not taking full advantage of my options or living up to my potential or whatever.”

Hotch reached out and wrapped his hand around the back of my neck and waited until I looked him in the eye before he spoke.

“I am not your father. I want you to make the decision that _you_ choose and that you can live with. I would support you whether you wanted to stay here and go to community college or go to Cambridge. The only way you would ever disappoint _me_ is if you made your decision to make someone else happy. Do you understand me?”

I sighed in relief and blinked back tears. I should have known that Hotch would figure out that I had really been thinking of my father’s reaction all along, even if I wasn’t conscious of it. Truthfully, I hadn’t realized how much importance I had been placing on my absent father until Hotch pointed it out. Damn it, but the old bastard was still taking up more of my brain space than I wanted.

“Thanks, Hotch.”

Hotch gently pulled me closer until my head was on his shoulder and his arm shifted to wrap around my shoulders.

“You do realize that Garcia is going to hack into Strader’s computer system to monitor your schedule, your grades, and the security cameras?” Hotch asked lightly.

I smiled. “Yeah. I know.”


	9. Marcato

_Related episode: 4.18 Omnivore_

_Marcato - to play each note separately or accented, "marked"_

In the darkness, I could only see vague images or flashes of color: a pair of eyes, a flash of silver, bright red. But mostly, I saw black all around me and in dream logic, I knew that there was something out there, something dark and malevolent. But I had no idea where it was, when it was coming for me, or what it wanted.

When a hand shook my shoulder, I didn’t register that it was too gentle to be whatever was after me and I struck out at the thing that was too close to me.

“Rachel!”

My eyes popped open and once my vision cleared up and adjusted to the dim light, I recognized Hotch leaning over me, concern etched on his face.

I took in air in big, gulping breaths, waiting for my racing heartbeat to slow down. Everything starting from five away from me and further was going blurry—I had my reading glasses on which were great for whenever I had a lot of reading to do, especially for small print textbooks, but were useless for anything else. I took them off and set them on top of the notebook in my lap. Hotch waited patiently for me to recover as I pushed myself upright on the couch where I must have fallen asleep doing my homework. 

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “Bad dream.”

Hotch nodded and reached out to steady me as I sat blinking and breathing, trying to banish the thoughts and images of the dream.

“Anything you need to talk about?” Hotch asked.

“No,” I said, shaking my head in denial as much as to clear my head. “It’s nothing.”

Hotch didn’t push and he didn’t call me out for lying. Instead, he just looked at me and said, “Come on, off to bed for some real sleep.”

I looked around at my scattered French and Calculus books. I had needed the full couch and coffee table in the living room to spread out my homework that night instead of working in my bedroom or at the desk. It was only February, but all the teachers of the senior classes were in overdrive to get everything done before AP exams and finals and graduation.

“I still need to work,” I said absently. “What time is it?”

“No, you need to sleep and it’s past two in the morning,” Hotch corrected me.

There would be no arguing with him then. Normally, he would let me be as long as it was before midnight. So, I nodded my agreement and got to my feet with Hotch’s help. In addition to still being half-asleep, I still had a brace on my ankle which wasn’t 100% fully recovered yet.

Hotch even went so far as to walk me to my room, whether to make sure I didn’t fall over or make sure that I actually went to bed, I’m never completely sure. Luckily, I was already in a pair of yoga pants and a tee shirt so I just pulled back my covers, revealing a sleeping Hannah in my bed. My cat voiced her protest, blinking bright green eyes and jumping off the bed in disgruntlement. I climbed in and pulled the covers back over me.

“I didn’t think you would be back so soon. How was Boston?” I asked sleepily. The reason I had been able to spread my homework out was because Hotch had been called up to Boston earlier in the day. He had been close-lipped about it, only telling me that it wasn’t a case but it was case related.

“It was fine.”

Even drifting off to sleep, I stared at Hotch standing in my doorway and raised my eyebrows. 

“Yuh-huh.”

Hotch sighed and paused on his way out. “We’ll talk in the morning, okay?”

I shrugged and then burrowed deep into my pillows. Hannah leapt up to join me a minute later, curling up in the empty space created by my body as I curled up on my side. Thank God I fell asleep quickly and didn’t dream to sleep peacefully through what was left of the night. Or rather, early morning.

I woke up to my alarm at six thirty and groaned. Two more days of school and I could sleep in tomorrow. I walked gingerly to my bathroom and splashed some water on my face. After that, I brushed my teeth, brushed out my hair, and returned to my room to make my bed. With Hannah relocated to curl up on my top pillow, I got out clothes for the cold day: boot cut chocolate colored corduroy pants which fit over my new air pressure bandage, a white collared shirt, and a purple argyle sweater. Back in the bathroom, I put on some eye shadow and stuck a lip gloss in my pocket for later.

Only then did I walk out into the living room and made my way to the kitchen. As usual, Hotch was sitting at the kitchen counter with a cup of coffee, waffles, bacon, and melon.

“Waffles are in the oven,” Hotch told me, getting up to refill his cup.

Before I went for the waffles, I got my own mug and poured in coffee and added sugar and vanilla cream. I drank the first half in one go and then grabbed a plate and the warm waffles. Hotch watched me critically as I poured on syrup, served myself some melon, and then downed the rest of my coffee.

“I worry about you sometimes,” Hotch said.

“Hmm?” I hummed absentmindedly, already contemplating another cup of coffee.

“You should at least wait for all-nighters at college before you start guzzling coffee like that.”

I stared at him balefully and defiantly stood up and poured myself a glass of orange juice.

“Tell me that you weren’t already drinking coffee at my age, I dare you.”

That earned me a rare smile and a refill on my coffee.

“I’m expecting a call about an old case some time today and the team will most likely fly out when that happens,” Hotch warned me as we were cleaning our breakfast dishes.

I thought for a moment. “Old case from Boston?” I guessed.

Hotch stared at me for the second time that morning, but I kept washing without looking up at him.

Finally, Hotch admitted, “Yes, it’s about an old case from Boston. And yes, before you ask, it has something to do with why I went there yesterday.”

“And?” I asked when Hotch fell silent.

“And I will tell you if I think you need to know and when I think you need to know it.”

Talk about a closed subject. But it wasn’t much of a surprise given how tired he had looked coming home last night.

So, I shrugged it off and went back to my room for my messenger bag and books.

“I’ll call or text if we’re headed out today,” Hotch told me as he put on his winter coat and grabbed his briefcase. “If you’re going to stay up tonight, please try to keep it no later than midnight.”

“Yes, sir,” I replied with a little salute before I grabbed my own coat and put it on.

We walked down to our cars together and said good bye. I turned on the classical radio station as I drove to school and debated looking up FBI cases in Boston. By the time I was parked in my spot in the student parking lot, I decided not to. Mostly because I had no facts to help narrow down the search.

I was still distracted thinking about Hotch’s behavior and missed a patch of ice on the sidewalk immediately outside of the school building. With my balance still compromised no matter that my broken ankle was well on its way to healing, I was kissing the ground before I knew what happened. In addition to the ice and snow wetting my pants, I also felt a twinge from my healing ankle despite the pressure bandage. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, I was now the center of attention for the outside crowd and earning a symphony of laughter.

I muttered strong oaths under my breath and pulled myself along the ground to the nearby staircase railing in order to haul myself to my feet. I still wasn’t quite able to stand on my own using just my legs. I had to take a moment to breath in long inhalations of air, waiting until the pain subsided.

“Yeah, laugh it up,” someone commented from behind me. “Immature jerks.”

I looked around and saw Liz Peterson and my ex-boyfriend, Mark Amborn. Really, what did I do to deserve falling on my butt in front of my ex?

“Come on,” Liz beckoned me inside. “I’m staying at my dad’s this weekend so I’ve got extra clothes.”

Mark silently followed us as we walked up the stairs. The band and orchestra practice rooms were closer than the girl’s locker room so we headed there and Mark guarded the door while Liz accompanied me inside to change clothes. Luckily, Liz and I were close enough in size that a pair of her jeans were just a little too long for me but fit overall.

“You okay?” Liz asked.

“Yeah, I’ll have these washed for you by tomorrow, all right?”

“Don’t worry about it, I know you’re good for them.”

“Thanks, Liz. You really saved my butt here.”

“Anytime.”

I balled up my wet pants and stuffed them into my bag. Liz and I walked out of the room where Mark was still standing, looking slightly uncomfortable.

“Thanks Mark,” I said. “You okay?”

He hesitated and I read the unease in his face clearly. More unease than could be explained by our break up last year.

“I was wondering…could we talk?”

Before Liz could make herself scarce or I could answer, Michael approached us looking concerned.

“Are you okay?” he asked me. “I heard you fell outside.”

I rolled my eyes. “I should not be surprised at the enterprising gossips of our school, but I’m definitely annoyed. I’m fine, I’m not hurting, and I am now dry thanks to Liz. Okay? Stop hovering or I’ll start calling you Garcia, understand?”

Michael whistled low. “Ouch. Give me a break, if something happened to you it’s my ass on a platter with Hotch.”

I glared at him. “Please don’t tell me that Hotch holds you responsible for my welfare at school.”

Michael shrugged. “It was never stated in words, it was all manly, silent communication.”

“I’m going to kill him when I get home,” I swore under my breath. I looked up at my best friend again. “And I’m really close to killing you right now.”

“Kill me later, gimp. You won’t catch me before the bell rings.”

Michael winked and fled before I could reach out to hit him. I returned my attention to Liz who was struggling not to laugh as she followed in Michael’s footsteps to the band room. Mark was still standing awkwardly and staring at me.

“Sorry,” I apologized. “You said you wanted to talk?”

“It can wait,” he said quickly and walked off.

If we had still been dating, those words would have me thinking the worst. Considering that we hadn’t really spoken to each other in a year, I was completely clueless as to why he wanted to talk to me. It wasn’t like he could tell me that our one night together resulted in a pregnancy that I didn’t know about.

But despite my curiosity, I put it out of my mind as I pulled my flute case and music out of my bag, hung up my jacket outside the band room and went inside. Luckily, I had my books and music for my morning classes of band, music theory, Calculus, and orchestra so I wouldn’t need to stop by my locker until lunch.

I expected Mark to catch me after band, but he was gone when I thought to look around. I didn’t think about it again until after my last class was over and I was at my locker packing up for the day. Mark’s locker was at the other end of the hallway since we were both toward the beginning of the alphabet. I saw him start to walk toward me, so I took my time selecting my text books to take home, stalling until he could approach me.

“Hey, Rachel.”

I flipped the top cover over on my messenger bag and set it on the floor before I took my jacket out of my locker and then closed it shut, spinning the dial to scramble the combination.

“Hey. So, you said you wanted to talk earlier?”

“Yeah, I was just…”

I waited a few moments after Mark trailed off before I tried to coax it out of him. I wanted to get home to change and start the laundry so that I could return Liz’s pants.

“Mark, just tell me what’s on your mind.”

“Look,” he said finally, losing some of his hesitance. “I know that we didn’t end things on the best of terms.”

You expected me to give up my best friend, I thought accusingly. “I thought we ended it as best as we could, given the circumstances.”

Mark reached up to rub his neck, embarrassed. “Yeah, it could have been a lot worse.”

I always thought that Mark was lucky I had so much else going on in my life last year that his ultimatum and my choice to choose my friendship with Michael over my relationship with him didn’t really compare. But that was not something I would never admit willingly.

“Mark, if you’re worried that you hurt me or whatever, you didn’t,” I told him honestly. “I’m not broken, I’m not still pining away. I’m okay, you don’t need to think about me.”

“I know, but I know it couldn’t have been easy when I started dating Alicia so soon after.”

Again, it was the least of my worries. Maybe other girls would have obsessed about their ex-boyfriend and ex-best friend dating, but weighed against Hotch almost getting blown up in New York, or Garcia getting shot, there was really no comparison.

“Mark, I don’t mean to be rude, but I really don’t care that you and Alicia are together.”

That finally seemed to stop him dead in his tracks.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” I confirmed, nodding my head with a little tilt of my eyebrows. I thought for a moment about what to say to him to gracefully end the conversation. “Look, I appreciate that you thought I would be hurt, but I’m telling you, you don’t need to worry about me, okay?”

Mark continued to look at me closely, as if judging my sincerity.

“Okay,” he said. “If you’re sure.”

I smiled politely. “I’m sure, thanks.”

“Alright then. Um, see you around.”

“Yeah, you too.”

I’m sad to admit that once Mark walked away, I dismissed him from my mind to focus on what I needed to accomplish that afternoon. He wasn’t a bad guy but I wasn’t sorry that we were broken up or that he was dating Alicia. I had other things to complicate my life, a boyfriend at this point would just be too much.

I drove home and immediately gathered the laundry from my room. Hotch and I had decided early on that we would each cover our own laundry in order to avoid one of us seeing the other’s undergarments. Neither of us needed that level of awkwardness. I pulled on my own pair of jeans and then got my first load started. Then, before I started on my homework for the night, I headed for the kitchen to plan out dinner. Given the cold weather and the fact we had corn bread, I decided on chili.

Hannah joined me in the kitchen as I chopped onions, bell peppers, celery, and garlic and put them in a large pot with some oil to soften. I mixed up a spice mix of chili powder, ground cumin and coriander, and a touch of brown sugar and dumped it in when the vegetables had cooked through. From the pantry, I got cans of diced tomatoes, light and dark red kidney beans, and cannellini beans. I set the stove on low and fed Hannah her dinner just in time to swap laundry loads. 

With dinner well in hand, I sat down in my usual spot on the couch to do my homework. I had a paper on _Antigone_ to write and another on _Le Petit Prince_ for English and French respectively. Once I had rough drafts for those, I turned to my psychology homework. It wasn’t my preference to take psychology but it was a graduation requirement to take one semester of a social science, so here I was. With the exception of the strictly biological stuff regarding the work up of the brain, I wasn’t learning a whole lot of new material. Because of my time spent with Reid, I already knew a lot about memory, perception, and decision making than the average teenager. And that’s not even considering the amount of knowledge I had picked up about profiling.

I was finishing up Calculus when I realized it was past dinner time and Hotch hadn’t come home yet. Since he normally let me know whenever he would stay late at the office, I sent him a text to ask when he would be home. I was hungry, so I dished out a bowl of chili and a slice of cornbread for myself to eat. I cleaned my dishes when I was done eating and took a break to read _The Other Boleyn Girl_.

Hotch didn’t walk in until past eight o’clock when I had turned back to homework and after I had finished my laundry.

“There’s chili on the stove,” I shared.

“I ate at work,” Hotch informed me.

“How was work today?” I asked.

Hotch didn’t answer me at first.

“Did something happen?” I asked.

“The detective I visited in Boston died today,” Hotch explained heavily. “It’s very likely that the team will be flying out tomorrow to Boston for a case.”

“Why?”

“I can’t explain it.”

“But something about an old case and this detective dying is going to warrant the team going to Boston,” I guessed, putting together the puzzle pieces I had.

“Rachel, please, just drop it.”

“Sorry, I was only trying to understand.”

“Well, you don’t need to understand,” Hotch snapped at me, turning from tired to angry in a heartbeat.

My mood flipped just as suddenly. “I said I was sorry, okay? You don’t need to bite my head off.”

“No, but you need to realize that you can’t keep pushing for information about our cases. You shouldn’t know the details to begin with and you will never understand everything that happens.”

By this point, I was well and truly pissed off and so was Hotch.

“And you can’t keep holding it all inside and lying to me that you’re all right when something is beating you up inside. I got enough of that from my dad, thanks!”

I gathered up my homework supplies and stalked to my room, closing the door shut behind me. I opened it for a second after a minute to let in Hannah who had been scratching at the door to be let in. I had a door direct to my bathroom and her litter box, so I could close the door shut again without worry.

I didn’t cry. It didn’t matter that Hotch’s words about not understanding the team’s cases were untruthful and undeserved. I didn’t care that it was the first argument that Hotch and I had ever had or that he raised his voice to me for the first time. I wouldn’t cry.

I never asked about cases out of morbid curiosity. It wasn’t that I got some vicarious thrill through the team taking down serial killers and rapists. I only ever wanted to know what was going on in the lives of the people I cared about so that I wouldn’t be surprised and so that I could help in whatever small way I could. For Hotch to turn that around on me and accuse me of pushing the issue hurt. For him to tell me that I didn’t understand hurt worse.

Still stewing, I packed up my books and threw my clothes into my now empty hamper in my closet. I put on warm flannel pants and a long sleeved tee shirt and removed my pressure bandage from my ankle. I did my therapy exercises and then wrapped my ankle with a cloth bandage to sleep in.

I picked up my book again and tried reading to calm down enough that I could later sleep. I gave up around ten and crawled under the bed covers. It still took me about an hour to fall asleep.

The next morning, Hotch was already gone by the time I had gotten up and gotten dressed in black jeans, a black cami, and a pink blouse. He hadn’t even had coffee here. Since I suddenly didn’t feel like making my own breakfast myself, I grabbed my bag, my keys, and my coat and headed out the door. I drove on autopilot to the Crown Café and managed to find a parking spot on the street.

As soon as I walked through the door and smelled coffee, pastries, and whatever scent they used to clean the tables and counters, I felt my spirits lift. But apparently, they weren’t lifted enough because as soon as Natasha saw me from behind the counter, she frowned slightly.

“Bad night?” she guessed when I walked up to look over the pastry selections.

It was no use keeping it from her, so I explained, “Hotch and I had a fight.”

To Natasha’s credit, she didn’t press me for details or ask me how I was doing. She just reached over the pastry display to rub her hand over my cheek and then briskly turned back to business.

“I think a Tuxedo mocha is in order for you today,” Natasha declared. “That should get you through school. And you’re working today, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then I’ll have a brownie ready and waiting for you at the usual time.”

“You’re going to make me fat,” I complained casually.

“Nonsense. You think so much, you burn off the extra calories.”

I walked out with my mocha and a cherry and cheese Danish and didn’t feel as upset about my fight with Hotch yesterday. Hopefully, I would be able to talk with him when we both got home and work things out.


	10. Aria

_Aria - a solo piece in an opera, usually defined in three sections, commonly described as ABA' formatting where the A and B sections are different and the repeated A section is modified or ornamented_

Really, it was the story of my life that the team would get called out on a case the same day that I was hoping Hotch and I could resolve our fight. It had happened frequently with my dad, so I wasn’t all that surprised that it happened now with Hotch as my guardian. What was different was that Garcia was the one to tell me that the team was flying to Boston, not Hotch.

Suddenly, I was worried that Hotch was still so angry at me that he didn’t let me know himself.

And that showed up in my mood that afternoon after school when I was working at Monarch. At four o’clock, I walked next door to pick up the snack order for Izzy and me—Colin was out of town on a book-buying spree.

Just like in the morning, Natasha picked up on my mood as soon as I walked in. Without waiting for her to prompt me, I gave her the update.

“I _was_ going to suggest that you and I go out to dinner tonight in case you wanted some space away from Hotch, but now I think staying in is in order. I can even spend the night, how does that sound?”

“Isn’t this your usual date night?” I asked. Natasha always seemed to have a boyfriend, but none of them seemed to last longer than a couple of months. Three weeks was about the average actually.

“Nah, I’m between men at the moment.”

Company sounded really good actually and that meant I wouldn’t mope all night. “That sounds fantastic.”

“All right then. Give me an hour after we both get off and I’ll bring food.”

“Thanks, Natasha.”

So once Izzy and I closed up for the night, I drove home, fed Hannah her dinner, and made sure that I had some cans of soda chilling in the refrigerator. I had changed into leggings and a flannel shirt by the time Natasha knocked on the door, duffle bag over her shoulder and plastic food bags in both hands.

“How much food did you get?” I asked, taking two of the many bags off her hands. “I was still half serious about you making me fat, you know.”

“Relax, I got sushi,” Natasha replied flippantly. “Sushi is healthy. And I got enough so that if we stay up late enough, it’s our midnight snack.”

“Fair enough. But this much sushi must have cost a fortune.”

“Not when one of my exes is a sushi chef at the Dragonfly.”

It was after I had peeked at our bounty of seafood and rice that I pointed out, “If this is what you get after you’ve broken up, do I want to know how much you could get when you were still dating him?”

Natasha only smirked and handed me some chopsticks. Instead of sitting at the kitchen counter to eat, we just set out the take out trays on the coffee table in front of the couch and sat on the floor, more out of laziness than authenticity. I had brought small plates and bowls and dished out the soy sauce, wasabi, and pickled ginger for us. Meanwhile, Natasha unpacked the rainbow roll, unagi, spicy tuna, dragon roll, salmon and avocado, AAC, California, and yellowtail in addition to various pieces of sashimi and nigiri. There was also seaweed salad, miso soup, shrimp gyoza, and calamari rings.

“I wasn’t sure what your favorites were, so I got the basics,” Natasha explained. “But remind me to take you there to dine in. They have this amazing roll that gets torched and gives the fish this excellent smoky taste.”

Only a fish market had more fish on display but as soon as I put the first piece of spicy tuna in my mouth, I was suddenly much more optimistic about my life.

We declared it a musical night and set up to watch _The Phantom of the Opera_ , _Cats,_ and _Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat_. We weren’t much farther than the Entracte of _Phantom_ when I heard knocking on the door.

“Here I thought you might be lonely tonight, chica, but it seems that someone’s beaten me to it,” Garcia exclaimed when I opened to door and she bustled inside. “Oo, sushi!”

I smirked. “Come on in, I’ll grab another plate. Tasha, want another drink while I’m up?”

Natasha flipped a thumbs up and then greeted Garcia cheerfully. They caught up with each other as I grabbed a small plate, another set of chopsticks, and three cans of Dr. Pepper. By the time I returned, Garcia was already seated. 

For a moment, I thought about what a picture we made. I was already dressed in casual clothes but Natasha must planned on making an impression on her ex-boyfriend because she was wearing dark jeans, a skin tight powder blue camisole, and a black silk open blouse. And there was Garcia in her usual flower patterned retro dress with her costume jewelry and spectacles. We couldn’t have looked more disparate had we tried.

But once I sat down, passed Garcia her plate and chopsticks, and served out the soda, we eased into camaraderie and conversation smoothly and effortlessly. Between the three of us, we did indeed finish off the sushi that probably should have fed five people.

I waited until I had placed my last piece of pickled ginger in my mouth, savoring the sweet heat of it on my tongue, before I asked what had crossed my mind as soon as Garcia had walked through the door.

“So, is Hotch really that angry with me that he sent you to check up on me?”

Garcia looked so startled at my question, I suddenly believed that Hotch hadn’t mentioned our fight to anyone and that no one had noticed or weaseled it out of him.

“Oh chickadee, he’s not angry with you,” Garcia corrected me. “He’s angry about the Reaper.”

“The Reaper?” Natasha asked. “Not the Boston Reaper?”

“Who’s the Boston Reaper?” I asked.

“A nasty, scary piece of work,” Natasha told me. “I thought he died, he stopped killing ten years ago.”

“Oh, he’s back,” Garcia said. “He’s killed four people since last night. That’s why the team flew out today.”

It wasn’t until I processed the Boston connection before I realized that Hotch had been to visit the Boston detective the day before the Boston Reaper had struck again after ten years.

“The detective who died in Boston, he worked on the case with Hotch ten years ago, didn’t he?” I asked Garcia, but it wasn’t really a question.

“Yeah, sweetie. The Reaper was just waiting for the good detective to die. Now he’s back and Hotch feels like if he had only caught the Reaper ten years ago, those people killed this week would still be alive.”

“Good God,” Natasha swore. 

“Any leads?” I asked.

“Not really.”

We dropped the subject of the Reaper on that ambiguous note and turned out attention to the next musical to watch and the salted caramel cupcakes Natasha had brought from the café. Garcia left soon after that to go home, leaving Natasha and I to ourselves. Eventually, Natasha changed into her silk pajama pants and we settled onto the couch, leaning against each other, to finish the last musical. Then, instead of sleeping on the couch, we both lay down in my bed with Hannah stretched out between us under the covers.

In my dreams, I saw blood and knives, my father’s broken face when he first saw my murdered mother and Frank’s cool smile. Then everything exploded in a fireball that burned cold instead of hot.

I woke up in a cold sweat, but thankfully didn’t wake up Natasha. With the barest light of dawn coming in through the apartment windows, I got up and pulled on my bathrobe for warmth. I felt freezing cold, but more emotionally than physically.

In the kitchen, I brewed a pot of coffee and put a pot of milk on the stove for café au laits. I made up a batch of pancake batter and put it in the fridge to wait for later in the morning. With exhaustion weighing on me, I crawled back into bed and fell back asleep.

Hours later, I woke up alone and only slightly more rested. I came out of the bedroom and found that Natasha had found my breakfast preparations and had picked up where I had left off.

I groggily accepted the cup of café au lait from Natasha and got the pint of blueberries from the fridge to add to the pancake batter. Natasha then took over for me on the stove top while I got the turkey bacon and stuck a plate in the microwave.

“I sometimes forget, the kinds of things you know about the world,” Natasha remarked. “Whenever I hear about what the agents on a case, I forget that this happens to you almost on a weekly basis. How terrified you must be sometimes.”

“Worry more than terror, mostly,” I corrected quietly. “But you’re not entirely wrong.”

“Sweetheart, you make my problems seem so trivial in comparison.”

“Not intentionally.”

We made a fabulous breakfast out of blueberry pancakes, bacon, and orange slices. Natasha left to go to work and I spent an hour cleaning up the apartment thoroughly before I got dressed for the day. I would be working at Monarch in the afternoon, so I got dressed in khaki pants and a black blouse and pulled my hair back into a loose twist. I managed to get some homework done before I also left for work. In light of breakfast, I didn’t bother with lunch before leaving.

It was just Izzy and I again at the book shop. My project that day was to restock and reorganize the “Caterpillar Corner” where all the children’s books were kept. Izzy had put on Celtic folk songs to play and I got lost in work and the music for hours. When it was time to close up, I went again next door to the café.

Natasha was back in the kitchen, prepping the baking to be done the next morning, so I bought a pair of croissants from the boy behind the counter and sent back my greetings to the chef.

At home once again, I fed Hannah and then took out my journal. I wrote for over two hours about what I was thinking and feeling over the last three days. Some of the writing came out so fast that looking back on it, I could hardly read it myself. But it wasn’t the journal’s purpose to be read.

The journal had been a gift from Hotch.

When I got hungry—earlier than usual since I had skipped lunch—I made up some tuna fish salad, spread it on one of the croissants, and added a slice of cheddar cheese. I toasted the whole thing in the oven and whipped up a quick side salad of arugula, cucumber, and avocado with red wine vinaigrette. Once I was done and had cleaned my dishes, I used the office computer to check my email and Facebook.

Given how little I had slept the night before, I went to bed early. I woke up only hours later with images of my blood covered hands imprinted on my eyelids.

When I got out of bed to go make myself some tea, I saw that I had slept through my cell phone ringing an hour earlier. 

_“Hey, chickadee. I wish I could tell you that the team brilliantly deduced who the Reaper is and that they caught him and they’re on their way home. Or, I wish I could tell you that the rotten bastard turned himself in and the team is coming home. Sadly, we don’t really have any new leads so it’s looking like this is going to be a long haul. Try not to worry too much. Sleep sweet my darling and I’ll call tomorrow.”_

My watch told me it was only ten at night so after I fixed a cup of peppermint and chamomile tea, I called Garcia’s cell phone back. I got her voicemail and left a brief message thanking her for the update. She called me from her office line five minutes later.

“ _Things just got worse, sweet pea_ ,” Garcia told me, her tone steely. “ _The Reaper just shot up a bus load full of people_.”

“Oh my God,” I said. “But, that’s so different from what he’s done before, isn’t it?”

I hadn’t been living with profilers for nothing, I knew this was a drastic change in the Reaper’s MO.

“ _You bet your bottom dollar it is. I’m waiting to hear from the team. Just you keep your nose clean for the next few days, kay?”_

“I promise.”

There was no going to sleep right after that conversation, so I watched some TV and curled up with Hannah on the couch. I fell asleep there and without Hotch walking in to wake me up and send me to bed, I stayed there until morning.

The next day I devoted to homework and scholarship applications and essays. I already had an appointment to audition for a music scholarship at Strader next month but I saw no reason not to apply for all the help I could get. Hotch always encouraged me to save as much of my trust fund as possible. Since I would inherit it all when graduated college, I had an apartment or a down payment on a music store in the back of my mind.

Around mid-afternoon, I was finished with my day’s work so I called Michael and invited him over to hang out. Sundays were always a good day for him since the auto shop was closed. By the time he got to the apartment, I had made up a fresh pitcher of iced tea and had more Dr. Pepper cooling in the fridge. We popped popcorn and settled on the couch to watch some of my Star Trek DVD’s.

Michael waited until Hannah had come out and positioned herself on my lap before he asked what was going on with me. I told him about the fight and the Boston Reaper.

“Rachel, I don’t think Hotch is actually angry at you,” Michael concluded.

I shrugged. “I know that he was probably worried about the Reaper when he yelled at me, but he wouldn’t have said those words unless he meant them on some level.”

“Or maybe he’s hoping that if you stop worrying about cases then you’ll be happier,” Michael pointed out.

I glanced at him side-long. “How much of this are you reading between the lines?”  
“Some,” Michael shrugged back. “Hotch is always going to worry about corrupting your life by bringing his work home with him.”

“Like my dad.”

“Pretty much. Just because Hotch isn’t as vocal about it as your dad was, doesn’t mean that he doesn’t feel exactly the same way.”

I sighed out loud, absently petting Hannah.

“I know all of this,” I said. “What burns me is that he thinks he can tell me I don’t understand his work when I probably understand it better than anyone else who isn’t an agent.”

“And it probably kills him that you do.”

Well, Michael probably wasn’t wrong.

Michael stayed for dinner and we made pizza out of pre-made pizza crusts, marinara sauce, mozzarella and parmesan cheese, and peppers, mushrooms, and turkey sausage with mozzarella sticks and more marinara sauce for dipping. 

“By the way, what did the douche have to say the other day? I never asked,” Michael asked once the last bite of crust was gone.

I rolled my eyes at his label for Mark but I answered, “I think he was trying to make amends for last year. He seemed to think that it has been difficult for me to have broken up with him _and_ watch him date Alicia all this past year.”

Michael snorted. “He never really knew you at all, did he?”

Considering that I had had feelings for Mark for a period of time, it was much more accurate than I cared to admit sometimes.

“I really don’t know what I was thinking,” I admitted.

“Well, you were going through a lot, between your mom and your dad,” Michael reminded me carefully.

“No, not that part,” I said. “I mean, I can’t believe that I was interested in him which was a year before all that stuff happened.”

“I’m not touching that with a ten foot pole,” Michael declared adamantly.

I burst into giggles. “Yeah, you’re right.”

He left around nine o’clock since we were back to school the next morning and he had some laundry and cleaning to do back at his apartment. I cleaned up the kitchen and then headed to my bedroom. I changed into pajamas, set some music playing, and got out a book to read in bed. I was waiting for Garcia or Reid to call me with an update as someone usually did.

Instead, I heard the apartment door lock click around ten thirty, followed by the usual sounds of Hotch tossing his keys on the table just inside the front door and dropping his briefcase on the nearby chair. I lay in my bed, waiting to hear him walk to his bedroom, but the sound of his steps grew louder as he approached my room.

Hotch looked like someone had been beating him with sticks for the last four days. Mentally, that was most likely true. He stood in the threshold and stared at me, looking exhausted.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted out. “I didn’t mean to push you or bother you.”

Hotch sighed and walked in, taking a seat on the foot of my bed. I drew my legs up under the covers and wrapped my arms around my knees.

“I’m sorry,” Hotch apologized gravely. “I was never upset with you and you weren’t bothering me. This case…”

“The Reaper.”

Hotch closed his eyes and then opened them, but kept his gaze directed at my feet.

“Yes, the Boston Reaper. George Foyet.”

“You found him,” I said, eyes wide in surprise.

“We did, but almost too late. We had never suspected him since he posed as one of his own victims.”

Hotch then told me everything that had happened since Thursday when he went to Boston to meet Detective Shaunassey. He told me about the deal that had lasted for ten years until the detective died. He listed the victims in a deadpan tone, clearly placing their deaths on his soul. And Hotch explained how Foyet, a supposed victim ten years ago with the knife wounds to prove it, had revealed himself as the Reaper, how he attacked Morgan, and how he had escaped custody.

After a moment of silence, I asked, “Will you catch him?”

“We have no way of finding him until he kills again,” Hotch admitted.

I felt a chill run through me as I realized the awful situation. In order to capture Foyet, to keep him from killing anyone else, he had to first kill more people.

“I shouldn’t have told you all that,” Hotch whispered. 

“But you needed to tell it all to someone,” I said quietly.

“He offered me the deal.”

My eyes flew up to his face. He still hadn’t looked up into mine.

“He offered me the deal and when I didn’t agree to it, he shot the people on that bus.”

It didn’t take a genius or a profiler to guess that Hotch blamed himself for those peoples’ deaths. But it didn’t take me too long to come up with a response.

“He never meant for you to agree.”

Finally, Hotch’s eyes met mine. His shock was naked on his face, the most open I had ever seen his expression.

“What?”

“He never meant for you to agree,” I repeated. “You were on the case ten years ago, so Foyet already knew about you then. You spoke with him again when you still thought he was a victim. And I know from you and Reid and Dad that often the people you profile are expert profilers themselves. So, Foyet knew what kind of man and agent you are. He offered you the deal _because_ he knew you would refuse it. Then he could blame his actions on you and not himself.” I shrugged. “Or at least, that’s what he wants you to think.”

Hotch let out a short bark of laughter. “Rachel, any time I think I can predict what you’ll do or what you’ll say, you surprise me every time without fail.”

“And that’s a good thing?” I asked, just to make sure.

Hotch reached out and took hold of my hands with his and squeezed.

“Yes. That’s a good thing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is a bit of a stretch with this one, but with the ABA format, I was going with the Rachel/Hotch interactions as the A section (embellished or altered on the second) and the B section when they're apart.


	11. La Boheme

_Related episodes: 4.24 Amplification_

_La Boheme - a Puccini opera depicting the lives of young Bohemians living in Paris' Latin quarter in the 1840s; one of the characters, Mimi, suffers from tuberculosis and dies in the final act_

There was something sad about my last tech week and premier night for the spring musical. It was probably the first time in my senior year that I realized it would be my “last.” My last AP tests would be next week, finals three weeks after that, I still hadn’t made up my mind for prom. The “lasts” were beginning to pile up.

I woke up the Saturday morning the weekend of the musical and discovered that Hotch was gone. There was a note for me on the kitchen counter: _Rachel, there’s a local case called in this morning. I might not be around tonight or tomorrow either, so you’ll most likely be on your own. Be careful and have good performance tonight. –Hotch_

Well, at least Hotch had already come to see _Annie_ last night. I would have understood if this case had meant he wouldn’t see it at all, but Hotch would have felt guilty. It’s not like it had never happened to me before in my life. Besides, I was in the pit and therefore unseen to the audience. Not that I thought it wasn’t important for parents of my fellow pit players to attend, I just understood parents with different, more complicated priorities.

Despite the late hour I had gone to bed last night, I was fairly clear-headed when I woke up. I hadn’t been dancing around the stage last night, but I felt sweaty and gritty from sitting in the cramped pit. I hopped in the shower and scrubbed all over, smiling at the bright red polish I had on my toenails—Garcia’s sporadic gift of pedicures in honor of this weekend. When I got out, I dried off, spent about five minutes toweling my hair dry, and braided it damp into one long plait. I got dressed in jeans and a tank top and padded out back into the kitchen for breakfast for myself and a meowing Hannah.

Hannah’s breakfast was easily sorted but mine required some thought. Due to tech week, I had been eating take out for dinner for the past six nights. I hadn’t put on any significant weight but I felt unhealthy so I had been trying to be extra healthy for my other meals. So I put together some Greek yogurt with honey, granola, sliced up a peach, and limited myself to a single cup of coffee. 

Amazingly, I was still caught up with my homework and studying and declared the morning for TV, pleasure reading, and Internet surfing. Lunch was salad greens with grilled chicken, sliced almonds, won ton strips, and Asian dressing. Colin had let me off for work that afternoon in light of the musical which I appreciated. The afternoon I spent baking brownies and chocolate chip cookies to bring with me to the cast party tomorrow night. With Hotch gone, I was free to crank up my music while I baked. He had never asked me specifically to keep my music down, but I always remembered his damaged ear drum from the car bomb in New York.

I hadn’t seen anything significant on the morning news when I had been flipping around on channels. Whatever local case Hotch and the team were working, it was being kept quiet. But I was fairly certain that a rash of murders or bombings would have been nearly impossible to keep out of the media, so the case couldn’t have been a serial killer. I shook my head to clear my guesses; either I would find out about it in a couple days, or I wouldn’t.

When it was time, I returned to my room to get dressed for the night: black cotton leggings and a short black dress, black socks and black ballet flats. I picked out the same silver hoop earrings I had worn last night and my musical charm necklace. It had started in freshman year when each student was given a silver charm for their participation; since I had played in the pit band, mine was a flute. The next year, everyone got a paper fan for _The King and I_ but my mom had bought me another silver charm, also a fan. Somehow Garcia had heard about this practice because last year, she had given me a silver book charm for _Into the Woods_ and now a small silver locket for _Annie_ this year.

In the mirror, after I put on make up, I traced the silver charms that hung on a long chain, resting just above my breasts. Four years I had played in the pit band. With this year, it was now an even split for those performances when my mom had been alive and present in the audience and when she had not been. Bracing my hands on either side of the sink in my bathroom, I breathed slowly and deeply in through my nose and out my mouth.

Finally, I fed Hannah her dinner, grabbed my flute case, music, purse, and car keys, I locked up and drove to the school auditorium. I parked in the back lot underneath a light automatically, a practice Dad had taught me when I was first learning to drive that I had never stopped. Walking through the lot, I joined the dozens of other students arriving for our call times before the second of our three performances. Saturdays were always big attendance nights, when more families were able to come watch, so even though we had one night under our belts, the pressure was still on.

Inside the auditorium, I made my way to the pit directly in front of the main stage and set up my music stand. I shared music with a sophomore flute player this year with another flutist rounding out our section. But seniority had its perks, and for being my fourth year in the pit, and therefore the most experience out of the flutes, I also had the piccolo music complete with the school’s piccolo instrument. _That_ music I never practiced at home for the sake of Hotch’s ears.

I was completely set up in less than ten minutes with my music and both my instruments. Up on stage, I saw Liz Peterson walk out, already decked out in her costume as Ms. Hannigan, only missing her mic and her make up.

“Try getting some sun,” she teased me.

“Don’t you know suntanning is bad for your complexion?” I teased back. I hadn’t stopped giving her grief for abandoning me for the stage again this year.

“Seriously, you should try it on this side of things sometime,” Liz said.

“No thanks,” I replied honestly. I liked the pit thank you very much.

Liz just shook her head. “There’s pizza in the band room, I heard. Grab some before everybody else gets here.”

“Thanks for the heads up.”

The band room was crowded with kids just arriving for their call times as well as the actors who were already dressed in their costumes and waiting for their turn in the make up and hair room. I was just in time to grab a slice of veggie pizza and the last slice of cheese.

Pretty soon, everyone was scrambling to get into their places; we in the pit were warming up and getting settled.

There is just no perfect way to describe performing in a musical production—or any large performance really—to someone who has never done it before. Your nerves are vibrating like tense strings, but your focus keeps you centered. You feel like you’re lost in the masses, but then suddenly your part is emphasized and it’s like you’re the only person that exists in the world. There’s a rush and a calm all at the same time.

And by the end of the night, I always feel like I could either go straight to sleep or stay awake through to the next morning. My dilemma was solved for me when I checked my voice messages on my way to my car.

_“Um, hey, Rachel, it’s Spencer. I’m just calling to let you know, I am really sorry that I missed your musical tonight, and last night, and probably tomorrow. And I’m sorry for the other performances I missed, too. You are one of the best people in my life and I wish that I was there for you more. But you’re already so good about taking care of yourself, even though I wish you didn’t have to be. Be good.”_

I was placing a call to Hotch before I even realized it. Something was very wrong and I needed to find out what.

“Why did Spencer leave me a cryptically apologetic and heartfelt message on my phone?” I demanded.

I heard Hotch sigh over the phone before he answered. _“Reid got sick during our case today and he’s in the hospital with a respiratory infection.”_

“How serious is it?” I asked. It had to be more than just illness to provoke Reid into actually telling me what he had left in that message. He just didn’t usually talk like that, even though I knew most of the time that’s how he felt.

_“It’s serious. He’s in critical care right now so you can’t go in to see him just yet. I’m already home, I can explain everything when you get here.”_

Well, screw that. I pressed my speed dial for Garcia at the same time I turned my car key in the ignition.

_“Hey, chickadee, I will be at your performance tomorrow, I promise,”_ she greeted me.

“Tell me what hospital,” I snapped. “Now,” I added when she hesitated.

Garcia didn’t need to ask me who I meant and then didn’t bother to ask how I knew about it all. “He only just got out of critical care an hour ago, sweetie.”

“I don’t care. You will not keep me from him, understand?”

Finally, she gave me the address. Garcia must have called the rest of the team because Morgan was waiting for me at the visitor’s entrance.

“Hotch is not going to like this. He’s waiting for you to come home,” Morgan explained, leading me through the hallways and flashing his badge at the hospital security who would have told us visiting hours were long over.

“Hotch should have known better than to tell me not to come to the hospital tonight,” I replied evenly.

Morgan winced. “Probably.”

Seeing Reid on a hospital bed, hooked up to an IV and monitors, looking pale and in pain just about stopped my heart. It was even more awful than seeing Garcia after she had been shot because I had no warning this time at all.

“What happened?” I demanded quietly.

“Respiratory infection,” Morgan answered, his voice monotone-flat.

I looked over my shoulder at the agent and glared. “Why you and Hotch and the rest of the team feel the need to continuously insult my intelligence is starting to get on my nerves. A respiratory infection wouldn’t have landed him in the hospital so quickly, wouldn’t have you hovering in his hospital room, and wouldn’t have Hotch trying to manage me. So tell me again, _what happened?”_

For a moment, it looked like Morgan still wouldn’t tell me. But then he looked around me at Reid, laid out like the dead and changed his mind.

“He was infected by a pathogen during our case today,” Morgan explained, sounding absolutely exhausted. “It’s serious, but he was able to help find the cure himself before he let us take him to the hospital.”

“What are his chances?” I asked flatly.

“Pretty good,” Morgan assured me right away. “He’s doing a lot better and the other patients are responding to the treatment, too.”

I decided not to press my luck by asking about the other patients or how this all was relevant to an FBI profiling team’s usual type of case. At this point, I really didn’t care.

“I promise I will call when he wakes up,” Morgan offered.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I informed him. I set my purse down on the floor next to a chair, sat down, and made myself comfortable.

Morgan sighed and carried another chair from the hallway for himself, taking a seat next to me.

“And stop thinking that Hotch is going to kill you for letting me stay here,” I demanded. “First of all, you are not ‘letting’ me stay. You are saving your breath and energy from a fruitless argument. Second of all, it’s about time that all of you realize I make my own decisions.”

“Believe me, baby, we all know that you make your own decisions,” Morgan said with equal parts exasperation, amusement, and pride in his voice. “But you know he’s probably not going to wake up until sometime tomorrow. Come back in the morning, I’ll stay the night.”

“Even you can’t stay awake for another twenty hours,” I pointed out. I had no idea how much Reid had confided in the other team members about his childhood, but I was well aware that he had been taking care of himself since before he went through puberty. Between his mom and his dad, I filled in the blanks. “I can’t leave him alone,” I added softly.

One habit I had started myself as a kid was to always bring a book with me wherever I went. I still kept it up even though I had naturally given up reading in the car when I had started driving. And knowing the best comfort tactic for Reid, I reached down into my purse and pulled out the paperback that one of my fellow cast members—a singer/actor named Seth Johnson—had returned to me just this night.

“I know you’d rather historical text than historical fiction, but if the urge to correct the inaccuracies wakes you up any faster for my peace of mind, I’m going for it,” I told Reid’s slumbering form and ignoring Morgan’s presence.

My last memory of that night is drifting off after reading several chapters of _The Da Vinci Code_ out loud.

/

“It’s just coincidence you know,” a croaky voice muttered.

I could not figure out why I was hunched over or why I smelled antiseptic. Or especially why it was so bright. I felt the pages and cover of a book in my hand and I thought for just a moment that once again, I had fallen asleep on the couch in the living room with the lights still on. But the lights were all wrong. And who was speaking again?

“It only works in French.”

I blinked at the harsh brightness and then my eyes focused on the thin figure that stared down at me, even from two feet away. Exhausted as I felt, I smiled.

“Spencer,” I said in relief, last night’s memories now fresh in my mind. Then I processed what he said. “What about French?”

“ _San Greal_ and _sang real_ ,” he told me softly but earnestly. “Holy Grail and royal blood in French. The words only work in French.”

I huffed out a quick breath of laughter. “I knew the urge to correct fiction would wake you up.”

I looked around the hospital room and noticed that we were alone. Through the glass and the curtain, I finally saw him standing outside, talking with an Asian woman in a doctor’s white coat and holding a tray of food. I turned back to Reid and grabbed his hand.

“They never told me, but you did something foolish, didn’t you?” I asked.

“Not on purpose,” he protested weakly. “I was just a minute ahead of Morgan.”

“Then why didn’t he stop you?” I demanded, ready to walk out and slap him.

“I shut the door in his face so he couldn’t get in, so he wouldn’t be exposed like I was,” Reid explained. “And then I was looking at him through the glass and he was so worried…”

And then, of all things to pop into my head.

“Wait a minute,” I interrupted, putting some of the facts together in my mind. “You were exposed to a toxic, fatal substance, you did it to save people, you wouldn’t let Morgan in with you, and then you were looking through glass to see him.” I paused for a moment. “Spencer, you are not a Vulcan, so stop trying to imitate Spock!”

Reid laughed and then groaned as if it hurt him.

“Hey, look who’s awake,” Morgan said from the doorway and then walked in with the food tray.

“Is that Jell-o?” Reid asked hopefully. “Can I have some Jell-o?”

“Whatever you say, pretty boy,” Morgan promised with a smile. Turning to me, he asked, “Don’t you have somewhere to be today?”

I checked my watch and saw that I had slept until eleven in the morning. I had three hours to get home, shower, change my clothes, sit through whatever scolding was due from Hotch, and then get back to school for my call time.

“Get going, girl,” Morgan ordered playfully. 

I wanted to stay. What was one more performance compared to making sure Reid was all right?

But of course, Reid could practically read my mind.

“Rachel, it’s okay, go play your last musical in high school.”

I hesitated. “You’re sure?”

Reid smiled at me. “The sun will come out tomorrow.”

I smiled back and went to leave. I was just outside the door when I suddenly knew how to return his music theatre reference. I faced Reid through the glass wall and raised my hand to the glass, spreading my fingers and thumb in a classic gesture.

Live long and prosper.


	12. Waltz

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter that I have no problem categorizing as fluff because Foyet is up next.

_Waltz - a smooth and progressive dance in triple-meter_

“No.”

“But Rachel—“

“Absolutely not.”

“I don’t know why you’re being so stubborn about this.”

I took another good look at what Natasha was holding in her hands and shook my head. “I am not wearing that.”

“That” was a strapless, champagne-gold colored dress with a beaded bodice and more material in the skirt than I would wear as an entire layered outfit on another day.

“Look, it’s gorgeous, but I’m not wearing it and I’m definitely not paying for it.”

Natasha stopped admiring her find and looked at me. “Wouldn’t Hotch give you a credit card to use?”

“I’m not making Hotch pay for my prom dress,” I said incredulously.

Yep, two weeks before I was to attend my high school prom and I still didn’t have a dress.

That I was even going to prom had surprised just about everyone who knew me well. Natasha had actually said, “Thought I’d have to brow-beat you into it,” when I told her. Garcia had squeaked in excitement and confirmed that it was a rite of passage I couldn’t skip. Reid had just looked at me in utter confusion and then shrugged it off. It didn’t take a genius to guess that Reid hadn’t ever been to a prom before, not even a school dance.

The one person I couldn’t get a read on was Hotch. When I had mentioned prom a couple weeks back and told him I was going, he just asked if I needed him to do anything and asked me to let him know my plans for the evening. That was it.

Now, I wasn’t going to prom because I thought it was a rite of passage, I didn’t have a date per se, and I wasn’t actually looking forward to facing the amassed throngs of my peers in party-mode. But while we were still preparing for _Annie_ , Liz Peterson had brought it up and asked if I was going.

_“Hadn’t thought of it, really,” I answered, packing up my flute and piccolo._

_“Well, a group of us from the cast are organizing a table and we’re one short,” Liz explained. “We’re fairly even as far as the sexes go, but we don’t want to get a random guy or girl assigned to our table. Besides, Seth Johnson doesn’t have a date.”_

_I raised my eyebrows at Liz. “You had me up until you practically set me up just now.”_

_Liz rolled her eyes back at me. “Seth is gay but he likes to dance.”_

So I thought about it for a couple of days and then handed Liz some money for my ticket. And now, I was almost down to the wire and found myself still missing a critical component for the event. When Natasha had found out the day before I hadn’t even gone shopping for a dress yet, her jaw dropped and then she marched over to her father’s shop and told him in no uncertain terms that he was giving me this Saturday afternoon off. Colin—the pushover—acquiesced.

“Well, what kind of dress are you looking for?” Natasha finally asked me after we had been looking for almost an hour.

“Something that isn’t going to break my bank, something I _will_ actually wear again, and nothing showy, glittery, beaded, revealing, or sexy,” I rattled off. “Something comfortable that I won’t spend the entire evening adjusting to keep my boobs from showing.”

“Uhg,” Natasha groaned in agony. “You are no fun whatsoever.”

“But you knew this already,” I told her.

“Fine. Let’s try the next shop.”

That made it my turn to groan. We had deliberately avoided the large department stores to spare me the chaos of all the other girls buying their prom dresses. I’m certain that Natasha knew that would send me running for the hills. Instead, we were hopping between smaller boutiques that ran the gamut from pretentious to hold-in-the-wall.

Our sixth store for the day turned out to be something of a thrift store with vintage dresses from different eras like flapper dresses from the twenties to the big, poofy sleeves of the eighties.

“Hmm,” Natasha hummed in thought and starting flipping through the hangers. “You’re too busty for the flappers and I know better than to try those sleeves on you.” She suddenly gasped. “Perfect! I dare you to criticize.”

I will admit, I couldn’t think of anything right away. The dress was royal blue, sleeveless, with a pleated swing skirt that looked like it would hit me just below the knees, and a wide-banded waist band. It had a V-neck that wasn’t too much of a plunge and the V was mirrored in the back of the dress as well.

“With your body, fifties should be perfect for you,” Natasha determined, referring to the hour-glass figure I was still growing into.

Seconds later, I was behind the curtain of the changing area and stripping off my jeans and tee shirt. I slipped into the dress and zipped it up on the side, feeling the waist settle just around the bottom of my rib cage and the fabric immediately above and below it hug my curves. It was still a little more skin than I preferred to show—and I would definitely need to get a different bra that wouldn’t show in the back—but it was everything I had asked for in a dress. The price tag included.

“If I tell you that you were right, would you be insufferable about it?” I asked Natasha as I stepped out from behind the curtain.

“Oh, my, God.”

I walked over to the mirror so I could see myself.

“Oh my God,” I repeated.

The color was perfect, the fit was great, and I didn’t look like a completely different version of myself wearing it; I looked like myself.

Natasha came up behind me and quickly pulled my hair into a knot and then tilted my head to see my profile.

“You will be a knock out,” Natasha declared. “I’ve got the perfect peacock feather hair clip to put here, just behind your ear for an accent. Keep the rest of your jewelry simple and go for the simple elegance of yourself and the dress together.”

I met Natasha’s eyes in the mirror and smiled in gratitude. “I know that I can be a pain and it seems like I don’t listen to you all the time, but I am so glad that you are my friend.”

Natasha smiled back at me and then rested her chin on my shoulder and hugged me from behind. “I know. I’m pretty amazing to put up with you.”

We both burst out laughing at the same time.

I was no stranger to dressing up. I dressed up for concerts and performances all year long in addition to the parties and holidays. I dressed up for work all the time and spent more of my days in skirts than jeans. I had years of practice of making myself look presentable and making myself look more formal. But even though I was confident that I could make myself ready for prom on my own, that was not to be allowed.

Somehow, it became a group project. The Thursday before, Garcia kidnapped me after school and took me to meet Emily and JJ for manicures and pedicures. Granted, the tech goddess was very cunning by pitching it to me as a girl’s pampering afternoon for all of them, not just me. But while the other women were getting solid colors on their nails—well, a different solid color for each of Garcia’s nails—I was with a graphic nail artist, who painted astonishingly lifelike renderings of peacock feathers on my fingernails and a shimmery royal blue on my toe nails.

After that, my hair was washed, cut to a more manageable length of just below my shoulders, and dried. The hair dresser was aware of my upcoming event and instructed me to not wash my hair until after prom. Since I was planning on having my hair done up, apparently it needed at least of day of natural oil to keep the up do secure. Who knew that clean hair wasn’t always best?

I was left alone for Friday, but when Natasha invaded the apartment Saturday afternoon, I looked at Hotch with pleading eyes.

“Save me. If you’ve every cared for me, please save me,” I begged.

Hotch just smirked into his cup of coffee and retreated to his office, leaving me to Natasha’s mercies.

Traitor.

She threw me in my bathroom to shower with my hair pulled up to keep it from getting wet. After I dried off, I found that Natasha had left me a pair of yoga pants and a button down shirt to wear while she applied make up to my face and did my hair.

For the special event, Natasha layered foundation primer, foundation, and concealer strategically with just a hint of blush across my cheekbones. For eye shadow, she used a shade of glittery gold as a base and then a dark brown right around my eyes with dark brown eyeliner and mascara on both the top and bottoms of my eyes. I was allowed to eat a grilled cheese and carrot sticks for a quick meal before she finished with a dark pink lipstick and shiny lip gloss.

After that, she twisted my hair into a French knot, using no less than two dozen bobby pins to hold my thick hair into place. After she layered on the hair spray, she placed a peacock feather barrette just behind my left ear. Finally, I stepped into my dress and got zipped up. I put in the sapphire studs Hotch had given me for Christmas and the jeweled peacock pendant on a gold chain to fit my theme for the evening. As always, my mother’s opal ring was on my right ring finger.

Natasha insisted on a spritz of fruity perfume and I was finally deemed ready to go. Or rather, I was ready to go, but while I had been getting pretty, Garcia, Emily, and Reid had arrived and Hotch had a camera in his hands.

Well, since I didn’t have an official date to pose with me, everyone else took a turn. And I was certain that as soon as I left, Garcia and Natasha both would have those pictures posted on Facebook quicker than lightning. But even I had to concede that I looked really good, so I didn’t mind it at all. I even asked if Garcia could have some printed out for me to add to the photo album that Hotch and Haley had gotten me for my birthday.

The album—which was intended to chronicle my senior year—did end up containing pictures of myself and my friends at school. But I also mostly had pictures of myself and my family. Sure, there were several of Liz, Seth, and my other pit band friends from _Annie_ down in the pit or in rehearsals. I had pictures of Michael in his mechanic jumpsuit with grease on his face and Natasha in the Royal Café’s kitchen.

But mostly, I had pictures from my birthday party, from Thanksgiving with the Morrises’, the Christmas party at the BAU, and now from tonight. Pictures of Morgan playfully sweeping me up in his arms like a damsel in distress. Rossi beaming at the whole group of us like an amused uncle, Garcia and her shenanigans, the ladies of the BAU including me in their friendship. Reid and me flashing Vulcan hand signs at the camera. And Hotch by my side throughout it all with a faint smile on his face that nonetheless displayed his affection and love.

“Have fun,” Hotch ordered with gentle admonishment.

And I really did. The gym was decorated nicely without being too over the top, the music was a nice mix of stuff I didn’t really care for and songs that I didn’t mind so much. There were snacks and appetizers, punch bowls (and I’m not sure if even one of them got spiked), and soda.

Our table was fairly exclusively band and choir students, as were the two tables next to us, leading to a lot of chair swapping between the couple dozen of us and a lot of partner sharing on the dance floor. My “date” Seth was fun and energetic. And it was a riot to point out the eye candy to each other while we were dancing.

Even though I knew I would have had even more fun with Michael, I also knew that he would be miserable here. That and I knew he didn’t have the money to rent a suit. So, Michael and I already had plans to hang out tomorrow for a Star Wars marathon.

It didn’t really hit me who else was missing until I was driving home. My compartmentalizing was getting to the point that it wasn’t until this moment I realized how much I had missed the fact that I hadn’t gone dress shopping with my mother. Or how I was supposed to have a date that Dad would profile or intimidate when he came to pick me up.

But for the sake of my sanity and my make up, I had obviously pushed those feelings down so that I could have a good time.

The fact remained, though, that as soon as I walked through the door of the apartment, I had just experienced my high school prom without my parents. And as much as I thought I could possibly ignore those feelings, I couldn’t hide them completely from Hotch who was waiting for me on the couch with his paperwork spread out in front of him.

“What happened?” he asked me immediately.

“Nothing,” I assured him with a watery smile. “I had a wonderful time.”

I casually tossed my keys into the bowl next to the door and placed my small, decorative purse next to it. By the time I walked over to join Hotch on the couch, he took in my expression and body language and unfortunately came to the right conclusion.

“I was wondering when it would hit you,” he remarked, not unkindly.

“Tell me you hate being right all the time,” I complained and collapsed next to him. I sighed. “Yeah, it hit me. It hit me that I’m going to graduate without either of my parents. I’m going to go to school without my mom buying me my text books, or Dad glaring at the boys in my co-ed dorm. I’ve got a whole life of important moments that they’ll never see.”

Hotch reached out and thumbed aside the tears that had started dripping down my cheeks. He then reached out and wrapped an arm around my shoulders to pull me close. I went easily, shaking from holding in sobs as I hadn’t done since right after Dad had left over a year ago.

“Shh, it’s okay.”

“Yeah, I know,” I choked out. “God I hate this.”

“Me, too.”

I knew he didn’t mean he hated me crying on him, it was that he also hated that I could still hurt this much and there was nothing he could really do to fix it except what he was already doing.

I didn’t allow myself to wallow too much. After a few minutes of tears and gentle rocking, I sat up and cleared my throat.

“I am going to change into pajamas, clean my face, and brush out my hair,” I announced. “Then I want hot chocolate.”

Hotch smiled. “Peppermint hot chocolate,” he offered.

“Yeah. Sounds great.”

/

Hotch was already gone for the day, taking Jack to the park, out to lunch, and then shopping for a new bike by the time I woke up and Michael rang the doorbell.

Due to the excitement of the night before and the late hour, I had opted to remain in yoga pants and a tank top, no make up, and with my hair in a messy bun. I had already showered the night before I had gone to sleep, so when I rolled out of bed this morning, I wasn’t putting a lot of effort into my clothing. As much fun as I had had dressing up for prom (very little sarcasm), I was reveling in the comfort of my outfit today. Michael was almost as bad in holey jeans and a tee shirt. Of course, Michael also wasn’t wearing any make up.

But Michael had arrived bearing gifts.

“I stopped by the café and picked up coffee and bagels,” he said, waving the fragrant cups and bag in my face. “Natasha also said to pass on the message: hopefully you acted scandalously and entirely inappropriate for once in your life, end message.”

“She must have finally gotten over the guilt over the last time I acted inappropriately,” I quipped, waving Michael and his ambrosia inside. “I’ll give it a few hours for my peers to wake up and upload the millions of pictures they took last night onto Facebook and share them with Tasha.”

“I checked this morning before coming over, there’s already a ton.”

I glanced at Michael side-long through my eyelashes as I retrieved the cream cheese from the fridge. I couldn’t tell from his words or expression whether he was regretting skipping prom. Despite our years of friendship and the confessions we shared, he could still close himself off from me.

“So, are we going to be ambitious and try the prequel trilogy first, or are we just sticking the original badass films?” Michael asked, setting our coffees on the table in front of the couch.

“I am not nearly rested enough to put up with Jar Jar Binks,” I told him.

“ _A New Hope_ it is then.”

I joined him on the couch with plates, napkins, the cream cheese, and a knife. Michael handed me my coffee while I traded him the cream cheese. My coffee was sweetened perfectly with vanilla cream and sugar. And Michael even saved me the blueberry bagel and took the cinnamon raisin one for himself.

And sure, we ended up reciting most of the dialogue along with the film. By the time Han, Luke, and Chewie were storming the Death Star’s detention center, Hannah had joined us after licking the smears of cream cheese off of our plates. By the time we were half way through _The Empire Strikes Back_ , I was leaning against Michael with his arm around my shoulders and my cat purring in our laps.

My phone buzzed during the afternoon, giving me alerts to texts from my friends and updates for the photos being posted and specifically, the photos where I was tagged. I dutifully shared them with Natasha and Garcia, trusting that between those two, my entire circle of friends and family would be covered.

I felt Michael inhale sharply, looking over as I scrolled through some of the pictures.

“What is it?” I asked.

He drew in a slow breath and let it out and I wondered if he was going to say anything. But finally, “You, um, you really look beautiful,” he mumbled.

The current picture was one from earlier in the night, when I had been posed with Hotch before leaving the apartment. Garcia must have snapped one after the actual posed shot—I was smiling faintly with my eyes closed and Hotch was leaning in to kiss my forehead. I was already planning to frame it for both of us.

“Yeah, if you only knew how much work went into looking like that,” I joked.

Michael hesitated for a beat, but then he said, “You look beautiful today, too,” so quiet I could barely hear him despite the short distance between us.

I looked up in surprise and suddenly felt Michael’s lips on mine before I even realized he had leaned down to kiss me. I gasped in surprise, accidentally allowing his tongue to enter my mouth. But then Michael pulled back, leaving me panting for air in surprise.

He remained silent, watching me intensely for the smallest reaction. I looked away from his eyes, but I could still feel his scrutiny. And my thoughts raced. I felt a rush of emotions and impressions—shock, warmth, electricity, a flash of anger at the surprise, tenderness, admiration for the risk, and a feeling like the bottom had just dropped out of my world.

To see if the feelings persisted, I grabbed his tee shirt and pulled him down again, wriggling my body to improve the angle and ignoring Hannah when she jumped out of the way, hissing in protest. Michael also ignored her, wrapping an arm around my waist to help pull me upright while caressing my face with his other hand. Soon, he had us arranged so that I straddled his lap and he had to lean back into the couch arm to keep from falling over.

I can’t deny that I’ve never thought about it. Even without the entire school population assuming that Michael and I were not only together but also sleeping together, when your best friend is male, the thoughts occur to you at some point or another. The fact that Michael was considerate, supportive, had a twisted sense of humor, and respected me? And while no one would call him traditionally attractive—certainly no one else was lining up to date him, hate to admit it—I liked just about everything about him.

So what the hell had taken me—us—this long? Michael had seen me through the worst time of my life after Mom and Dad. I stayed with him during the years that his father was beating him. I cared for him so much, it had killed me to see him hurt. I did love him.

Kissing him though was completely uncharted territory.

We both pulled back at the same time, just as wandering hands were about to wander into _very_ uncharted territory. We didn’t pull back by much though, so I was caught staring into his brown eyes as his were staring into mine.

“So,” he said breathlessly.

“Yeah,” I agreed. If I had been sitting on top of any other guy, I never would have said anything. But Michael and I had been honest with each other from the very beginning. I saw no reason to deviate from that at this point.

“This is a little weird,” I admitted.

Michael sighed in relief. “Thank God you said it.” He paused for a moment to look down and off to the side and then looked back up at me. “But I felt like I had to try it.”

I smiled back at him in reassurance. “I’m glad you did,” I told him, still honest with him. “That doesn’t make it less weird.”

“Then let’s try this nice and slow and see what happens,” he suggested. Then he reached out to grasp the back of my neck and pulled me in to kiss me again.

Thank God we came up for air in time to notice how late it was getting. Unspoken was the agreement that neither of us wanted Hotch to walk in and find us like that. I wasn’t even sure I wanted Hotch to know about it at all right away.

After Michael left, after one last breath-stealing kiss at the doorway, I went back to my room and double checked my homework was ready for the next day at school. I got a text from Hotch that he was on his way home with dinner, perfect timing by my clock. Even better, Hotch had brought Jack with him.

Sitting there that night, sharing a meal with Hotch and Jack, it struck me that I was actually feeling happy. After Mom had died and Dad had left, I never thought I would feel happy again. Even after things had settled with Hotch, meeting Natasha, accepting the love and support of Reid, Emily, and the rest of the team, I figured the best I could get was “content” or “pretty good.”

But I was graduating high school with honors, accepted into my first choice college with a handful of good scholarships. I had a loving family, even if none of us were related by DNA. And now I had something new with Michael that had me grinning.

I couldn’t wait to see where it was all going.


	13. Tritone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All righty, folks, warnings for Foyet, hang in there.

_Related episodes: 4.25 To Hell…and Back, 5.1 Faceless, Nameless_

_Tritone - the musical interval between a perfect fourth and perfect fifth, it sounds dissonant to the ear; commonly known as the Devil's interval_

Was love always so complicated? I guess I already had ample proof of that truth in the love I felt for my father (equal parts love and hate on some days), but apparently, life felt like I needed a reminder.

I loved Michael, I did. That love had developed over years of support, confessions, and shared pain. It was steady and warm, reliable and comfortable. But after our first kiss…that love between us was altered into something else. Now there was an alien element to it that fizzed and sparked like nothing I had ever felt before.

All of the familiarity of our relationship was gone, replaced by hesitation and expectation. Sitting on the couch together used to be simple, but now if Michael had his arm wrapped around my shoulders, we both sat a little more at attention, wondering if one of us should make a move to initiate more.

As much as I still loved Michael—that hadn’t changed—it was just a little awkward sometimes.

On a night that Hotch was away on a case that ended up in Canada of all places, Michael and I acted as we usually did and completed some homework for our shared classes and then ordered out for Chinese food. After that, the awkwardness set in as we suddenly couldn’t decide where to hang out: the couch…or my room.

Sure Michael had been in my room before. Sometimes it was easier to spread out our books that way and my music was set up in my room when we wanted to listen to it. It was fine as long as our friendship had been platonic. Which it definitely wasn’t any longer.

Maybe Michael felt that same uncertainty, because he hesitated as well after helping me pack up the leftovers and do the dishes.

“So…” he said, trailing off deliberately.

My back was still turned to him to wipe off the counters, more of a stalling technique than anything else. Despite the exploring we had done recently, there was one significant step we hadn’t taken. Unlike my relationship with Mark, my hesitation this time didn’t come from the act itself, but the person. Was I ready to have sex with Michael?

I turned around to face him, but kept leaning against the counter. I tried to speak, but I still didn’t know what I wanted to say. Michael read my mind anyway and walked over, standing close and crowding into my personal space. I let him lean in and place his arms on either side of me, let him lean forward and down to brush his lips against mine. I reached and wrapped my arms around his neck, kissing back and closing the scant distance between us. This was slowly becoming familiar, just as it was slowly becoming familiar when Michael’s hands brushed against the bare skin at my waist that had been exposed by my shirt riding up.

A minute later, we were stretched out on my bed. I had lost my shirt on the floor of the hallway; Michael had lost his on my bedroom floor. When I felt Michael’s hands on the waistband of my jeans, I froze for a second, but then I rushed to shimmy out of them before he could notice my surprise. Either he didn’t, or he decided to ignore it, because soon he was removing his own jeans before turning his attention to my bra.

It was different from what had happened with Mark. Of course it was different and it was different for a whole host of reasons. Going into it was different, my feelings were much different, and naturally, Michael was different.

Probably most importantly, once it was over, Michael didn’t immediately move away to get his clothes and get out of the room. Instead, he stayed by my side and kept an arm wrapped around me as our breathing settled from erratic to normal. I don’t know what might have happened next because my phone rang.

I sighed in exasperation and saw that it was Garcia calling me, most likely for my nightly check in that she, Hotch, and Reid still did when they went away on a case. I guess it was lucky that she hadn’t called me earlier.

_“Hey, chickadee.”_

Garcia sounded exhausted like I’d never heard her before, not even after she’d been shot.

“What’s wrong?” I asked immediately.

_“Sweetheart, I can’t tell you how awful it’s been. Just, really, truly awful.”_

I sat up straight, tension radiating off my body so that Michael sat up next to me and rubbed his hand across my shoulders.

“Is everyone okay? What happened?”

_“The absolute worst piece of scum we’ve ever come across—I’m not telling you any more than that, I’m going to need all the pictures of fluffy kittens and ducklings that exist just to re-balance my own chi.”_

“But everyone is okay?” I asked, because I needed to hear the words.

_“Well, yeah, except for the horrifying images and heart-wrenching events, we’re okay.”_

I sighed in relief. Yes, it sounded like this had been the worst case the team had ever done, but at least it sounded like they were all coming home in one piece.

I talked with Garcia a little bit longer, telling her about school and my music scholarship audition that had taken place while the team had been gone. Basically, I tried to distract her from whatever it was that had happened. I know she put me on speaker, too, so that the whole team could hear me rattle on about inconsequential, but normal, things.

Michael stared at me after I hung up and then reached out to brush his hand across my cheek. “Everything okay?”

“It will be, I think,” I answered. “Hotch will be home later tonight, around midnight.”

“Do you want me to stay?”

Maybe, just maybe, I might have said yes, and Michael could have crashed on the couch. But with the way things were now, there was too much open for debate about where Michael would sleep and I wasn’t ready for those questions or their answers.

“Hotch will be in bad shape when he gets home,” I explained truthfully. “It’s probably a better idea that I’m the only one to see it.”

Michael nodded in agreement and then pulled me into his arms. “He’s coming home, that’s the important thing.”

“Yeah.”

And that was the real reason that I loved him. He knew me like no one else except for Hotch or Reid and he knew what I needed to hear.

So, Michael got dressed, kissed me on the cheek, and then left for his own apartment. Once he was gone, I grabbed my underwear, jeans, and tank top and got dressed myself before stripping my bed and put my sheets in the washer. Maybe I was being paranoid, but I still didn’t want Hotch to figure out that Michael and I were now sleeping together. Hell, he probably knew anyway, but I wanted to keep my delusion that it was still secret.

I could only guess what kind of shape Hotch would be in when he got home, but I was guessing it would be on the same level as when he had come home from New York a year ago. I wanted to wait up for him, but I fell asleep on the couch.

I woke up when a hand shook my shoulder. I groaned and blinked my eyes open, squinting and expecting to see Hotch’s bemused face at finding me asleep on the couch once again.

It wasn’t Hotch.

“Oh my God.”

The words slipped out of my mouth without any thought on my part. All I could think about was the black masked figure leaning over me and pointing a very real looking gun at my chest. Instinctively, I tried to push myself back further into the couch to get away, but it didn’t make a difference.

“Hello, there,” the voice came out of the mask. “And no, you don’t get to wake up from this bad dream.”

“Who are you? What do you want?” I demanded.

“Didn’t Agent Hotchner tell you about the Reaper?”

What little breath I still had in my lungs escaped in a rush. I had escaped my encounter with Frank because I was too young to fit his victimology. But from what Hotch had told me months ago after Boston, I knew I was the Reaper’s favorite type of victim, a teenaged girl, personally connected to a federal agent he wanted to target and destroy.

I was never so certain in my life that I was going to die.

But damned if I was going to cower in front of him. It wouldn’t save my life and I wasn’t the same girl from two years ago who had cried in front of a serial killer.

“I thought you might scream,” Foyet said. “Aren’t you frightened?”

It would be stupid to lie. “Yes,” I answered.

He chuckled. “But you won’t show me just how frightened you are, is that right? Agent Hotchner has taught you well.”

It actually had very little to do with Hotch, so I didn’t respond. I couldn’t decide whether to agree with him or set him straight. Instead, I forced myself to breathe as steadily as I could, despite the gun that remained pointed at me and the sadistic serial killer that continued to stare at me.

“What happens now?” I asked, my voice shaking just a little. “Do you kill me and leave my body for Hotch to find?”

“Something like that,” Foyet answered casually.

Confirmation of my death broke some of my composure—I closed my eyes, my lips trembled from holding back a cry, and some tears leaked out and trailed down my cheeks.

“Shhh, now you were doing so well.”

I flinched when Foyet’s gloved hand wiped the tears off my face. But I also opened my eyes and locked my gaze on his eyes through his mask. I couldn’t hide my fear, but I wouldn’t let it run me over. And even though I knew I was going to die, I also knew something else.

“He’ll kill you,” I warned him. “Someday, Hotch will kill you.”

Foyet chuckled again. “I don’t think so.”

He reached for me again, but out of sudden desperation, I launched myself over the back of the couch, barely landing on my feet on the floor behind it, and took off running for the front door. Halfway there, Foyet caught me, spun me around, and pushed me down. I rolled across the carpet and hit my head against the table leg.

Partially stunned, I didn’t fight when Foyet hauled me to my feet and held me up against his body. He half-carried me further into the apartment so that we wouldn’t be seen from the front door. I wondered why, and I wondered why Foyet hadn’t just shot me already, until I heard keys in the lock. Hotch was home.

Instead of feeling hope, I knew that Foyet had always planned on killing me in front of Hotch, to make it even more personal.

Foyet leaned down to whisper in my ear, “Not a sound.”

He pulled a knife from his pocket and then brought it up to rest just below my collarbone. I felt the edge press ever so slightly into my body, already starting to cut through the layers of skin. The gun remained in his other hand, loosely pointed at the ground.

It seemed like an eternity between the moment that I heard the front door open, heard Hotch drop his keys and briefcase in their usual places, and then walk all the way inside. Warning be damned, before Hotch could pour himself a drink, I called out, “Hotch!”

He turned around and only a handful of people in the entire world would have been able to read his expression once he caught sight of Foyet holding me captive.

“You should have made a deal,” Foyet taunted him. “But what’s another death on your conscious, Agent Hotchner?”

Hotch kept his eyes on Foyet, but his words were directed at me. “Rachel, are you all right?”

“So far,” I answered, trying to keep my voice steady.

I saw the bullet hole erupt in the wall next to Hotch’s head before it registered that Foyet’s arm had stretched out and fired. I couldn’t stop my entire body from flinching at the sound. Hotch, however, hadn’t twitched in the slightest.

“Is that what you told her about my profile?” Foyet asked. “You can’t show me fear?”

“If you don’t see any fear, maybe it’s because I’m not afraid of you,” Hotch replied.

“You said that like you actually meant it.”

Foyet brought the gun up to my head and then used his knife-holding hand to rip the mask off his face. Before I could even think about trying to escape, the knife was back and I was screwed again.

“She’s afraid,” Foyet said, pressing the knife further into my skin until I started to bleed. I bit my lip to keep from whimpering. “You know what I’ll do to her, Agent Hotchner. She’s right to be afraid.”

“Are you going to talk her to death?” Hotch asked sardonically.

For just one second, I wondered at how Hotch could possibly be so cavalier about the situation. But then Foyet shifted his balance behind me and I felt wetness on my shirt. I looked down to see the hilt of the knife sticking out of my abdomen and blood already leaking out.

“What…?”

“Rachel!” 

I dropped to my knees, bringing my hands up to the hole in my body. I was vaguely aware that Hotch had sprung into action and was fighting off Foyet. But Hotch was exhausted and couldn’t block it when Foyet pistol-whipped him several times. Soon enough, Hotch landed on the floor beside me, groaning and trying to recover.

“Go,” he ordered me weakly. But before he could stand up, Foyet was right above him. I watched in shock as Foyet stabbed him three times in quick succession, but I couldn’t believe it was happening. Even as I tried to keep pressure on my own wound and watched as all the fight left Hotch’s body not even a foot away from me, it couldn’t be real.

I rolled to my side, trying to get to the door or my phone, _just away_ , but Foyet abandoned Hotch and blocked my way. He grabbed my shoulder and pushed me on my back. I didn’t see his arm as he brought the gun to slam against my face, but I felt the impact. Then in a mixed blessing, I stopping feeling everything, including the pain.

_“Don’t speak. You’ve lost a lot of blood, you’ll need your oxygen. Do you know how much you have to study the human body to stab yourself repeatedly and not die? I don’t want to brag, I’m somewhat of an expert._

_“Do you want to see my scars? Yours are going to look just the same.”_

Of all my nightmares, that had to be the absolute worst. I could still feel the pain in my stomach and face, I could still feel blood on my hands—my own instead of my mother’s or Garcia’s.

I blinked my eyes open, Foyet’s voice haunting my thoughts, and looked around to get my bearings. My God, my nightmare was real.

Hotch was on the floor about two feet away from me. I thought his shirt was red—an odd choice for him to wear to work—but it was his own blood staining his shirt. I suddenly realized that what I thought had been a nightmare had actually happened which meant… I looked down at my own shirt and saw my tank top just as red as Hotch’s. I had been stabbed, just like Hotch. And one of the most sadistic and notorious serial killers in recent history was in our home.

“Well, well, look who’s back with us.”

Suddenly, Foyet’s smirking face filled my field of vision.

“Thought we might have lost you there.”

“Rachel…”

I rolled my head sideways so that I could look at Hotch instead. He was staring back at me and reaching out his hand toward me. I stretched out my own arm, trying to catch his hand, but Foyet struck first, digging his knife into the muscle of my upper arm.

I was too stunned to scream and screams would have encouraged the Reaper anyway. I sucked in air through my mouth, trying to breathe through the pain. As Foyet leaned back to examine his work, I noticed for the first time that he was shirtless. His scars were prominent white lines on his body.

“Leave her alone,” Hotch threatened. “My team—“

Foyet ripped the knife out of my arm and quickly stabbed it into Hotch’s torso again.

“Your team didn’t catch me until I wanted them to,” Foyet taunted him while I gasped in pain from the added damage of the knife’s exit. “You’re not in charge, don’t be foolish. Try to relax, your body will go numb.”

I wished I felt numb, but I had never felt this much pain before in my life. For a fleeting moment, I almost wondered if it would be better if Foyet came back and ended it. But that wasn’t right. I couldn’t give up or Hotch would always blame himself for my death. Just as I was sure Foyet would kill me, I was also sure that Hotch was blaming himself for letting it all happen.

And Foyet was smart enough to catch on that whatever pain he inflicted on me doubled the guilt Hotch was feeling. And now that I was conscious, I was fair game again.

He left Hotch and came back over to me, kneeling over me with his knees planted on either side of my body. Now, he took his time when he stabbed me, once just opposite my heart, another halfway between my left hip bone and belly button, and again right in the middle of my torso. I was struggling to stay conscious because even though I figured Foyet would stop if I passed out, I wasn’t certain I would wake up again. Instead, I struggled to breathe and felt my blood trickle and gush out of my body to the tempo of my heartbeat.

After Hotch had returned from Boston, I had read up on the Reaper, trying to really understand this psychopath. Even without Hotch telling me Foyet’s preferred victim, I would have figured it out by comparing how many stab wounds the younger girls had compared to the men and older women.

So far, Foyet had only stabbed me five times—it could only be the very beginning. But to my shock, Foyet returned to Hotch who was still struggling to reach out to me and maintain his own consciousness.

“I understand that profilers think that stabbing someone is a substitution for sex. That if someone is impotent, they’ll use a knife instead,” Foyet said, glancing back at his handiwork with me before focusing his full attention back on Hotch. “Is that what you think? Maybe this will change the way that you profile.”

I finally lost my battle staying awake, fading out again to the sound of Foyet’s taunts and the sight of Hotch’s limp and bloody body.


	14. Grave

_Related episodes: 5.01 Faceless, Nameless_

_Grave - a tempo marking to indicate a passage should be performed slowly and seriously_

The afterlife was bright like the clichés, and compared to the amount of pain I had been feeling at the time I died, the fact that I felt like I was floating certainly supported my theory that I was dead. But the sounds were not like the angelic choirs I would have imagined. I heard voices, sure, but there were also mechanical beeps and other machine noises I detected.

I blinked several times and started to recognize some of the objects around me. Large glass windows, beeping machines with digital readouts, a plastic chair, and beyond the windows, a reception desk and a dozen people wearing hospital scrubs and lab coats walking around.

I was in a hospital room, not Heaven. What the hell had happened?

“Agent, the girl is waking up,” a voice called out.

I groaned as a wave of nausea hit me when I tried to sit up straight.

“Rachel! Don’t do that.”

Like a mirage, Emily Prentiss entered my room, her commanding voice ringing through my ears.

“Emily? Where am I? How did I get here?” I demanded groggily. Only then did all of my memories return like a sledgehammer. I tried to sit up again, panicking.

“Emily, it was Foyet, the Reaper, he was in the apartment, he attacked Hotch and me, oh my God, is Hotch okay? Where is he? What happened to Foyet? Please—“

“Rachel!” Emily’s voice cut through my ramblings. “ _Please_ , I need you to calm down before the nurses kick me out and sedate you. Just breathe deep with me, okay?”

Emily sat next to me on the hospital bed, gently pushing my shoulders back until I was laying on the mattress and pillow again. She inhaled slowly, waiting for me to match her. I did and also followed her exhale.

“We know about Foyet,” Emily explained after I had calmed down. “Hotch is in the next room, he’s okay.”

I looked at her in disbelief. Even from what I could remember and what I was conscious for, Hotch couldn’t possibly be fine.

“Really,” Emily assured me. “He woke up about an hour ago. You had more blood loss, so it’s taken you longer to wake up.”

I frowned in confusion. “But Foyet stabbed him more than he did me.”

Now Emily frowned back at me. “You remember what happened? Hotch said he blacked out after Foyet stabbed him the first time.”

The way she said it, and even under the influence of the painkilling drugs I knew I had to have coursing through my body, I could tell that she didn’t quite believe what Hotch had told her. I knew he had lied, but I had to believe that he had his reasons.

“I was in and out,” I told her honestly enough. “But I know Foyet was…over with Hotch every time I looked around.”

That last part wasn’t quite perfectly honest, but I wasn’t about to betray Hotch before I could talk to him myself.

“Can I see him?” I asked. I wouldn’t really believe we had both survived the Reaper until I saw him with my own eyes.

Emily sighed. “Haley and Jack just arrived. They…need to say good bye. I’ll ask if I can take you in later.”

“Say good bye? Why would they say good bye if they only just got here?”

“Rachel, did Hotch ever tell you what the Reaper did to his victims?” Emily asked me before answering my question.

I couldn’t help the shudder that ran through my body and then flinched at the pain that came from it. It was on the tip of my tongue to snap that yes, I was intimately aware of what Foyet did to his victims.

“He always takes something from them and then leaves something else,” Emily elaborated, the profiler likely realizing the effect her question had had on me. “Well, Foyet took the address listing Hotch kept for Haley and left behind a picture of her and Jack with a bloody fingerprint on it. With Haley and Jack in Foyet’s sights, the U.S. Marshalls are putting them into protective custody.”

Personally, I thought I had been pretty composed up until then, but once my brain connected the dots that we wouldn’t even know where Jack and Haley were once they left the hospital, and just the thought of Foyet doing to them what he had already done to me, finally pushed me over the edge. I started to cry slow, scalding tears and let my face crumble.

Emily leaned over to hug me, but suddenly having someone else so close to me after what had happened, I jerked away from her touch and winced once again as my body protested.

While Emily pretended I hadn’t just panicked, I finally took the time to look over the damage. I reached up to feel the side of my head and found a tender spot the size of a baseball surrounding the outside of my left eye. Without a mirror, I could only guess that it was probably very colorful. But the movement of my left arm brought the white bandage wrapped around it to my attention. So did the pain that was beginning to throb. I left that arm still and then used my right hand to ghost over my abdomen despite the small pinprick that came from the IV inserted on the top of it.

The number of bandages didn’t match the number of wounds that I remembered, but I felt one bandage wrap around my shoulder for the wound under my right collarbone. One covered the two just below my ribs, and a third over my left hip. Five stab wounds, four bandages, one contusion, and a freaking partridge in a damn pear tree.

“Rachel,” Emily asked hesitantly. “Do you know how Foyet got into the apartment?”

I shook my head and tried to stop wincing in pain. “No,” I answered. “He was just—there, shaking me awake on the couch.”

I stopped speaking, not sure how much I wanted to reveal. Thankfully, I was saved when I heard knocking on the glass window of my room. Both Emily and I looked up and saw Rossi standing in the doorway.

“Haley and Jack are here,” he told us. “Haley wants to speak to Hotch alone first.”

“I’ll watch Jack,” Emily offered. She turned and smiled at me. “I’ll be right back, I promise.”

She stood up and exited the room, exchanging a nod with Rossi on her way out. The older agent came and took a seat on the plastic chair next to my bed.

“How are you feeling, kiddo?”

“I really don’t know,” I said.

Rossi accepted that answer and simply waited for me to go on if I wanted to. And even if I really didn’t want to get into what had happened, I had one question that I had to ask.

“Why am I alive?”

“Well, Foyet brought you and Hotch to the hospital here.”

“No, I mean, why didn’t Foyet kill me?”

If it had been anyone else sitting next to me, I was fairly certain I wouldn’t get a meaningful answer. Garcia would refuse to talk about it or just tell me not to think about it and just appreciate the fact I was alive. Reid and Emily would both dance around the question by giving me a partial answer really addressing the real reasons I was asking. Hotch…I didn’t know how Hotch would answer now.

But Rossi had never shied away from my questions or even hesitated while he formulated an appropriate answer rather than a truthful one.

“We think that Foyet didn’t want to risk leaving you behind at the apartment,” Rossi told me gently. “That he was worried if someone found you before he could get away from dropping Hotch off at the hospital, he would be caught.”

I lay back and thought about it for a moment. It seemed like a very plausible answer and one that Rossi believed was true.

“Or he kept me alive so that he can just attack me again.”

“That is never going to happen again,” Rossi swore to me. I really wanted to believe him but I was too much of a realist.

“There’s got to be more to it than that,” I muttered.

“There’s no need to hash it all out right now,” Rossi pointed out reasonably. “You need to rest.”

I sighed, realizing that that was all I was going to get out of him for now. Instead of thinking that he would now treat me the same way the others did when it came to sharing information with me, I was certain that if I asked him again later on, he would tell me more then.

Emily returned to my room with a grim expression on her face.

“The Marshalls just left with Haley and Jack,” she told us. She perched gently on the foot of my bed. “Rachel, Hotch suggested that after you’re healed, you go into Witness Protection as well.”

My answer was immediate. “Absolutely not.”

Rossi and Emily exchanged a glance, but neither of them seemed surprised at Hotch’s idea or my response to it.

“It would be safer,” Emily pointed out, though she said it like she knew I wouldn’t change my mind.

“I don’t care,” I said. “I’m not going to let some sadistic psychopath chase me away from my home and family. I’m glad that Haley and Jack will be safe, that’s the best thing for them. But I won’t do it.”

Both the agents seemed like they wanted to press the issue, but thankfully, a doctor in a lab coat entered my room to check on me. Dr. Zwerling introduced herself and I struggled not to think of my mother and how she would have taken over my care.

After checking my charts and the various monitors hooked up to my systems, Dr. Zwerling glanced significantly at Rossi and suggested he give us some privacy. Rossi went, but I was confused why the doctor hadn’t insisted Emily leave as well.

“Ms. Gideon, you’ve escaped infection for your wounds and I’m pleased with the outcome of your surgery earlier this morning.” Here the doctor paused. “After your surgery, we did perform other exams to determine if there was any other medical issues we would need to address…”

She trailed off and seemed as if she was expecting me to answer something for her. Unfortunately, I was clueless. Weren’t the stab wounds enough?

“Rachel, they detected signs of sexual activity,” Emily clarified when she realized I wasn’t connecting the dots.

Oh.

“My boyfriend was with me earlier last night,” I explained quietly. “I wasn’t raped.”

Actually, I hadn’t even worried about that, even when Foyet was shirtless and kneeling over my body.

Dr. Zwerling nodded and smiled slightly in relief. She excused herself to go check on Hotch. Speaking of…

“When can I see him?” I asked.

“I want you both to stay in your respective beds for at least the rest of today and tonight,” the doctor said definitively. “We’ll see about it tomorrow morning.”

Life as a doctor’s daughter meant that I knew better than to argue, so I settled back into my bed for a moment before I sat up again when I realized something else.

“Emily, does Michael know what happened?”

She nodded sadly. “When Hotch’s phone kept going to voicemail, we tried calling you,” Emily told me. “Then, when that didn’t work, we spoke with Michael at your school.”

“Why didn’t you just call him?” I asked. “You can’t tell me that Garcia couldn’t have found his cell number.”

Emily smiled faintly. “The team was actually called in to work a case today that took us to your school.”

“What the hell happened at my school?” I demanded, starting to push myself upright and then falling back as my stomach muscles, healing skin, and fresh stitches screamed at me in protest.

“Everything is fine, there’s nothing for you to worry about,” Emily assured me quickly. “A classmate of yours, Jeffrey Barton, his father received threats. Rossi, Morgan, and JJ were at your school to protect Jeffrey. While they were there, Rossi asked your principal if you were in school.”

“But did any of them find Michael and talk to him?” I asked. 

Emily shook her head. “They were focused on Jeffrey and after they solved the case, they came straight here. Once they did and we figured out what was going on, Garcia began making calls to Michael, your friend Natasha, and her father.”

Again, I tried to settle back into my bed. But I was suddenly afraid to close my eyes.

“Sleep, Rachel,” Emily told me.

“Can’t,” I argued. Then it occurred to me who hadn’t been mentioned all day. “Where’s Spencer?”

Emily didn’t answer me right away. Then, very carefully, she said, “He’s here, in the hospital.”

I looked over at her intently and repeated, “Where’s Spencer?”

She sighed. “He was shot protecting Dr. Barton from the unsub this afternoon, so he’s in his own hospital room downstairs.”

“What the hell happened?”

“Jeffrey Barton was a red herring,” Emily explained. “The unsub was after his father, Dr. Barton, the whole time. But only Reid was with him when the unsub found them. Reid was shot in the leg after pushing Barton out of the way.”

Every last bit of composure I had been holding onto, concentrating on getting answers and finding out what exactly had happened, crumbled and fled my body. 

My now complicated feelings for Michael and our new relationship. And that Michael would probably blame himself for not staying with me that night.

Coming face to face with yet another psychopathic, homicidal son of a bitch.

Feeling a switchblade penetrate my body multiple times and watching my guardian, my protector, experience the same thing.

Knowing that Hotch had just lost Haley and Jack to protective anonymity.

And now learning that Reid had been shot.

Emily grasped my hand as fresh tears coursed down my cheeks and I tried to keep my body from shaking too much. She didn’t try to tell me it would be okay or that I was safe. She just held my hand and squeezed gently due to the IV and rode out the storm.

Rossi had joined us at some point because as I was starting to slow down, he was pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket and used it to delicately wipe my face clean.

“I’d like to be alone now,” I choked out, my voice raw and my eyes sore.

Once they were gone, I let myself cry out all the tears I could just to get rid of them. I now had no idea how the rest of my life was going to play out. Would I still go to Strader? Would Michael let the guilt get in the way of our relationship? Would Hotch start to shut me out so that I wasn’t as tempting a target for Foyet?

Once again, it felt like my life had completely derailed and I wasn’t sure I could pick up the pieces this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a little tag piece where I have the team speculate why Foyet doesn't kill Rachel.


	15. Coda

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter for this movement here. Up next will be a kind of "filler" movement because some chapters just didn't fit in either movement properly.

_Coda - a passage of music to close a piece_

After Frank had killed my mother in our house, I had only returned and stayed for a week before moving in with Dad. But I hadn’t ever entered the bedroom where Mom had died again.

After seven days spent recovering in the hospital, Rossi drove Hotch and myself back to the apartment. I had dozens of stitches still holding my stomach skin together and a detailed list of instructions for post-op care and a prescription for antibiotics. Hotch was the same.

He and I hadn’t talked a lot since Foyet had attacked us and Haley and Jack had been taken into Witness Protection. Actually, most of the conversation between us was the argument about whether I should have gone with them.

_“It isn’t safe here anymore,” Hotch told me once we were finally allowed to visit each other._

_“He’s named Haley and Jack as his next victims,” I argued. “He won’t come back for me since I’m already a victim,” I explained bitterly._

_I hadn’t ever really considered myself a victim before. My mother had been a victim, I had been a witness. But now with Foyet’s scars on my body, I had to finally admit it._

_“With Haley and Jack out of his reach, he might come after you if you’re all he has available,” Hotch snapped._

_I took several deep breaths—carefully to avoid pulling at my stitches—before I tried again._

_“I am not letting him win,” I said quietly. “I already lost one home and my dad to a serial killer. I am not going to give up the life that I have planned. I’ll be careful,” I hastened to assure him. “I’m not going to be stupid or take unnecessary chances. But no. I’m not running.”_

_“We’ll talk about this later,” Hotch finally said._

Only we didn’t really talk about it again, or much of anything else. I could already tell that Hotch was blocking out everyone who was still in his life, including myself. Even though I had anticipated it and Rossi and Emily had taken the time to warn me, it still hurt. Despite knowing the real reason, I couldn’t help but feel like he was punishing me.

Walking inside of the apartment, I had to take a moment just inside the front door before I could continue walking inside. There wasn’t any evidence of the bullet hole or blood stains anymore, but I didn’t need the visual reminders to flashback.

“Maybe you should go lie down for a bit,” Rossi suggested, probably knowing exactly what I was going through. “Garcia will be by later to help out and check in.”

I nodded absently and followed his directions. Hotch was still in the front room, but I left him for Rossi to take care of. I was barely holding myself together. Once in my bedroom, I settled down quickly on my bed, feeling fatigued just from walking from the car to the apartment. I closed the door behind me so that I could change into yoga pants and a loose tee shirt that wouldn’t compress my bandages or stitches.

After a moment, Hannah leapt up on the bed beside me and approached me on silent paws. I braced myself in case she jumped up on my stomach and landed on my still-healing wounds. But she didn’t. Instead, my cat sniffed me over carefully from my nose to my chest. Finally, she rubbed her head into my neck and then settled herself into a tight ball right near my face.

I felt a tear trail down my cheek as I reached out and rested my hand on her warm, furry body. And even though I had had plenty of time to sleep at the hospital, it hadn’t been consistent, so I drifted off to sleep.

In my dreams, I saw glimpses of the stars on a cloudy night. I saw shadows and flickering candlelight. I saw Michael, his face obscured by a hood. I watched my father walk away from me again, even as I found myself pleading for him to come back.

I saw Hotch, bleeding out in front of me, staring straight into my eyes until the light went out in his.

“Rachel.”

I jerked awake and immediately regretted it.

“God damn,” I swore breathlessly. I blinked my eyes to clear away the last traces of sleep. It hadn’t been this dark when I had gotten to my room, so I must have slept for several hours. Not that I felt all that rested.

“Rachel.”

I jumped about a foot when Rossi spoke again. He waited impassively as I propped myself up and carefully eased my legs off my bed so my feet could reach the floor.

“Feel any better?” he asked.

I shrugged a no-comment and got to my feet. “What’s going on?”

“Garcia is here in case you need help cleaning up.”

Right. With my bandages, I had to get dolled up with plastic in order to take a shower. Unconsciously, I fingered my hair which reached half way down my back—I could barely hold left arm out for a half minute without it throbbing. Oh yeah, this was just going to be a joy.

In the end, it was nearly an hour later before Garcia, Rossi, Hotch, and I were sitting down to eat the dinner which Rossi had prepared while I had struggled in the shower. I wondered if Rossi knew how much I was reading into his cuisine choice of risotto, roasted chicken, and salad. Rather heavy options, but definitely in mind of building up our strength, not to mention generally comforting. Plus, I knew risotto required constant attention which is probably his own coping technique just like it was mine.

Granted I only ate about half the amount Garcia put on my plate, and she was being light handed compared to her usual fussing as it was. Conversation was also on the light side.

Eventually, both Rossi and Garcia left for their own homes, leaving Hotch and I to our awkward détente. We cleaned up the dishes in silent tandem out of habit and then retreated to our respective rooms without saying a single word to each other.

I tried to sleep again, but even with the antibiotics and pain killers I had taken with dinner, I only slept for another two hours. At least this time it had been completely without dreams or images of any kind. I grabbed a robe and put it on before making my way to the kitchen with the intention of making a cup of tea.

I found Hotch sitting on the living room couch in near-complete darkness, just staring out into space. I altered my path and came to sit next to him. For a long time, we maintained our recent habit of silence. And after nearly a week of being shut out, even knowing the reason behind it, I finally found the words to break the impasse.

“Will Foyet win this, too?” I asked.

In a lot of ways, I was closer to Hotch than my own father, for very obvious reasons. After everything else I had lost in my life, I didn’t want to lose the relationship I had with my guardian.

Hotch sighed and brought a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose.

“You know why it has to be this way,” he told me heavily.

“Yeah,” I agreed because I did. “But I don’t care.”

“It’s for your own protection,” he insisted. “You would be even safer in Witness Protection.”

“No,” I responded quickly. The less he thought of that the better. “Just give it up.”

“Would you just—“

“No!” I snapped. “I am not going to leave you alone here!”

“And I am not going to just sit here while you have a target on your back because of me!” Hotch shouted back at me.

“What happened isn’t your fault!” I argued, reaching the end of my patience.

“He never would have come after you if it hadn’t been for me. It was my job to protect you and I failed!”

We had each jumped to our feet once we started shouting, but at this point, Hotch reached out to grab me by the shoulders.

“Please don’t send me away,” I begged, my voice cracking. “Please.”

Damn it, it was my biggest weakness. I didn’t need to hang out with profilers to know that abandonment issues would follow me the rest of my natural life.

Hotch cursed under his breath and then pulled me into his arms, holding me gently. I didn’t cry the way I wanted to, because I was getting sick of myself again for turning into a waterfall.

“Okay, it’s okay,” Hotch said softly into my shoulder.

I pulled back just enough to look up into Hotch’s face. “No more pushing me into Witness Protection.”

He sighed heavily and let me go. “I can’t stop believing that you will be safer away from here, away from me.” He sat down on the couch just as heavily. He looked exhausted in a way that I had never seen before. Fair enough. The last time I had seen a man so utterly defeated was looking at my father after my mother had been murdered.

“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” I admitted and sat down next to him again. Of course I knew I would safer with Haley and Jack. “But I just can’t run, not again.”

“You wouldn’t be running,” Hotch tried to correct me.

“That how it feels,” I explained. “Hotch, the last time I was attacked by a serial killer, I lost everything. I lost my mother, my father, my home, and a whole crap load of my trust in the world and the people I _thought_ I was supposed to be able to count on.”

“Rachel,” Hotch interrupted.

“But I refuse to lose anything more to Foyet,” I kept going. I lost the sense of safety I had in yet another of my homes, I would lose Hotch if I let him push me away, and I could tell that even in the past few days, I had lost something with Michael because of the attack.

Finally, Hotch seemed to realize that he wasn’t going to win on Witness Protection.

“If you won’t go with the marshals, please consider applying to another school,” Hotch suggested. “You were accepted to half a dozen colleges and universities across the country. Wait for the first week of the semester for students to drop out and get on the transfer list.”

“But that’s still running,” I argued. “It’s settling for something that I didn’t want to do before and I don’t really want to do now.”

“Let’s just pretend that I go along with your plan to attend Strader this fall,” Hotch relented a bare inch.

“A fair assumption as I don’t exactly need your permission,” I remarked snidely.

Hotch shook his head and went on, “You absolutely cannot live in the campus dormitories.”

“And you definitely won’t let me keep living here,” I tacked on neutrally.

Hotch glanced at me sideways but he didn’t contradict me. I already knew from Emily and Rossi that Foyet would be watching Hotch like a hawk for his perverse pleasure. So I was willing to concede to my safety by leaving the apartment and Foyet’s targeted stalking.

And personally? I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of staying in the same place where I had been attacked. It was worse than the house where I had lived with my mother. Even just sitting there with Hotch, I was fighting back memories of bleeding out on the carpet immediately behind the couch.

So I wanted to do a _little_ running. But it wasn’t the same thing as running away.

“So what do you suggest?” I asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Hotch admitted. “But we have a few months to figure it out.”

“Okay.”

Back in my room, I was too worked up to sleep, so I brought up Facebook on my computer. Not even ten seconds later, I closed down the chat option to avoid the half dozen people who suddenly had to check in with me. I read through all of my messages and posts on my wall numbly, generally wondering at the sheer volume of people talking to me or about me. Of course, a lot of them were from Natasha, Michael, Liz, even my brothers Alan, John, and John’s wife, Kat.

But there were so many people that had never been close to me who talked—or typed—like they knew me better than they did. I was back to practically being a celebrity again. Only, instead of being the girl whose mother had been murdered, now I was the girl who had been attacked by a serial killer.

I shut my computer off in disgust. I wasn’t looking forward to returning to school in the next two days, except for the fact that the sooner I went back to school, the sooner we would graduate and I would never have to see most of them ever again.

Right now, college was mostly enticing to me because no one would know my life story except what I was willing to say. I would only say that I lost both my parents when I was sixteen, which was honest enough, if misleading. And I would never admit to having been assaulted. Foyet would be a secret. I was tired of being a freak show.

**Author's Note:**

> So, here I am again after all these years. Apologies to all; suffice it to say, life happened. Fear not, I have this written almost through the fifth season and that's probably going to be close to when I call this series "done". I plan on updating weekly.


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